The planning ministry launched the project titled 'Formulation of Outline Participatory Perspective Plan (OPPP)' at the auditorium of National Economic Council (NEC) yesterday.

"Establishing a poverty- and corruption-free Bangladesh, achieving the status of middle-income country, and ensuring social justice for all by 2030 should be the objectives of the project," Finance Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam said while launching the project.

"About 40 percent people are now living under the poverty line and our first task is to make a poverty-free Bangladesh by the period [2030]," he said.

The adviser also emphasised the need to ensure power supply to every household, saying that the country's economic growth has been hampered largely due to short supply of electricity.

He also stressed the need to set goals for the health and education sectors in order to ensure a human resource-driven growth.

Noted economists, secretaries and high officials of different ministries were present at the programme chaired by Planning Secretary Jafar Ahmed Chowdhury.

To prepare the Vision Paper 2030, two officials from the general economic division of the planning ministry have already been appointed as the project director and deputy director in addition to their current charge.

A team leader, a senior consultant and a consultant would also be appointed for the project. Besides, the process of forming a project steering committee with the principal secretary to the chief adviser/prime minister as its chairperson is underway.

The chairman of Dhaka University's economics department and the director generals of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) would be the members of the steering committee.

The project aims at formulating a long-term perspective plan (2007-2021) for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as accelerating the growth and preparation of the vision paper 2030, giving the highest priority to poverty reduction.

A total of 18 sectors have been identified to prepare the perspective plan and the process is underway to form 18 panels of experts. Eminent economists, agriculturists, engineers, physicians, administrators, businessmen and development activists will be inducted into the panels of experts.

Kamal Uddin Ahmed, chief of general economic division, said Bangladesh has prepared a three-year Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) taking the MDGs into account. But the PRSP is a medium-term macroeconomic framework, which does not offer any sector-wise allocation of development expenditure.

"Under the circumstances, preparation of a long-term perspective plan for at least 10 years seems to be in order. As practised in some neighbouring countries, a Vision Paper for a long-term, up to 20 or 30 years, may also sound reasonable," he said.