Guideline needed for spending under gender budgeting

The government should formulate a guideline on spending allocations of gender-sensitive budgeting to ensure transparency in the fund's use, speakers told a discussion on the issue yesterday.

Gender budgeting or gender-sensitive budgeting means preparing budgets or analysing them from a gender perspective, not dividing budgets for women.

It aims at dealing with budgetary gender inequality issues, including gender hierarchies and the discrepancies between women and men salaries.

“The allocation of gender budgeting has been increasing every year but there is no clear instruction on how the fund will be utilised,” said Nilufar Banu, executive director of Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad (BUP), which organised the discussion.

The allocation rose to 29.48 percent of the proposed national budget for 2018-19 whereas it was 2.94 percent of the one for 2014-15, she said in a keynote presentation at the event in the capital's National Press Club.

However, women's progress is very minimal as the fund is not being used properly, she added.

Women made notable progress in education, health and empowerment, mostly in urban areas, while people in deprived areas like haors and chars are still lagging behind, said Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman of Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF).

Deprived areas will have to get more focus during the formulation of budgets to remove inequality, he added.

The government keeps a special budgetary allocation of Tk 100 crore every year for women entrepreneurs but the fund remains unutilised, said Hannana Begum, vice president of Bangladesh Economic Association.

“We are totally in the dark about the utilisation of funds and the government should look into it,” she said.

The discussion was chaired by BUP Chairman Rejaul Karim.