Merge social safety net schemes for greater benefits: WB
The World Bank yesterday advised Bangladesh to merge its overlapping social safety net programmes, introduce a unified target, improve administrative efficiency and enhance monitoring so that the benefits reach those who need them the most.
The existing safety nets are marred by fragmentation, weak targeting and inefficiency, the WB said in its Bangladesh Social Protection & Labour Review Report.
AHM Mustafa Kamal, planning minister; Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of the Power and Participation Research Centre; Qimiao Fan, country director of the WB; and Shamsul Alam, member of the General Economics Division, launched the report at the National Economic Council in Dhaka.
The report came amid allegations that well-off people linked with the ruling alliance have been awarded cards that should only go to the poor.
There are also allegations that some ruling party men are selling rice, meant to be sold to the poor for Tk 10 per kg, to their well-off relatives or in the black market.
"I admit that we can't say that we have been 100 percent successful. However, these programmes have largely benefitted the targeted groups," Kamal said.
The Awami League-led government introduced social safety net programmes in 1996 and now 142 programmes are in place.
He said the government has taken steps to address the faults and failures in the distribution of rice at subsidised rates.
Kamal said Bangladesh would be able to reach its target on cutting extreme poverty well before the UN-fixed deadline of 2030.
The WB report said the first step to addressing fragmentation among similar programmes and rationalising the delivery of scarce resources would be to consolidate programmes with overlapping objectives and functions.
It called for improving implementation efficiency, as weak administrative capacity and systems introduce inefficiencies and increase the scope for fraud and corruption.
"This is particularly prominent in food-based programmes."
Subsequently, it called for strengthening the administrative systems while phasing out food-based programmes.
The practice of monitoring and evaluating programme effectiveness, let alone rigorous impact evaluation, is not very common in Bangladesh, pointing to the need for improvement in the area.
The government has allocated Tk 45,230 crore for the social safety net projects this fiscal year.
The allocation is 2.31 percent of the gross domestic product and 13.28 percent of the budget allocation, according to a presentation made by Alam.
However, the allocation would stand at 1.4 percent of GDP if the pension for retired government officials and monthly honorarium for insolvent freedom fighters are excluded.
Still, the allocation is relatively higher than India and Sri Lanka, which spend 0.64 percent and 0.49 percent of their respective GDP, according to the WB report.
The number of active social safety programmes grew from 56 in fiscal 2008-09 to 145 in fiscal 2015-16.
Had the social safety net programmes been efficient, the poverty rate would have come down by 3 percent, Rahman said.
"One can't take the 3 percent cut in poverty lightly if it can be gained by improving efficiency," he said, while urging the government to focus more on new ideas and efficiency gains.
The former caretaker government adviser said labour market reforms have to be brought in. There has to be health insurance.
Rahman said technical education suffers from social stigma that only the poor go to the technical schools. It is a barrier in cutting poverty.
Technical education has become the poor people's education because it pays poorly, said Rushidan Islam Rahman, research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
"We have to improve the skill training and create jobs that can absorb these people."
The economist said she had recently carried out a research on women garment workers.
She said some garment workers told her that they return empty-handed to their homes as there is no pension despite working for a long time.
There could be a monthly pension system for garment workers for, say, five to 10 years. The employees will contribute to the system while the employers and the government would also join in.
Fan said social safety net programmes have played an important role in Bangladesh in helping the country reduce poverty and achieve human development success.
"But 28 million people are still living below the poverty line, and that's a challenge."
He said efforts of the social safety net are undermined by weak targeting, inefficiency and fragmentation, and these have to be addressed.
Fan called for strengthening and augmenting the current social safety net system. A comprehensive pension system could be prepared as a long-term plan as the population ages, he added.
Alam said studies showed that the average benefit of social safety net programmes in Bangladesh is falling in real terms in many cases.
There has been considerable leakage of allocated funds and 27 percent of the beneficiaries are non-poor, according to the paper he presented.
The National Social Security Strategy aims to shift from current discretionary to a targeted universal approach to avoid leakages and under-coverage.
Under the NSSS, the government would initiate a social insurance system that enables people to invest in their own social security, he said.
Yoonyoung Cho, senior economist of the WB, presented the Bangladesh Social Protection and Labour Review.
The review report said creating more, better and inclusive jobs is critical for Bangladesh to benefit from the ongoing favourable demographic transition and progress in human development.
The quality of jobs in Bangladesh is a concerning issue for many workers as one-third of the male and half of the female workers are either engaged in unpaid family work or work as day labourers.
Bangladesh's current social protection and labour systems, characterised by a large number of social safety net programmes with under-developed social insurance and labour market programmes, are not adequately equipped to address the formidable challenges in the dynamically changing country.
The WB review calls for policy efforts to improve existing social assistance programmes and promote earnings opportunities for the poor utilising a wider set of policy instruments.
Iffath Sharif, programme leader of the WB, also spoke.
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