FM seeks ODA in dev efforts

Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni speaks at the opening session of the two-day Special Ministerial Meeting for MDG's Review in Asia and the Pacific Run Up to 2015 in Jakarta yesterday. photo: courtesy by Foreign Ministry

Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni yesterday deplored the newer barriers raised by some developed countries against flow of goods, services and people from the developing world.
“Such protectionist measures are negatively impacting our development efforts and eroding confidence in the ongoing negotiations at the WTO,” she said while addressing the opening session of the two-day Special Ministerial Meeting for MDG's Review in Asia and the Pacific Run Up to 2015 in Jakarta.
The FM said Bangladesh is implementing most of its development programmes through domestic resources. “We could have done better if these efforts were sufficiently supplemented by Overseas Development Aid (ODA),” she added.
Dipu Moni regretted that most of the developed countries have miserably failed to meet their obligation, as agreed in the Monterrey Consensus, to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) as ODA to developing countries, according to a message received here yesterday.
She said Bangladesh is one of the worst victims of climate change despite its negligible contribution to greenhouse gas emission. The erratic pattern of natural disasters -- flood, drought, cyclones, and tidal surges -- with increased frequency and ferocity is negatively affecting Bangladesh's development efforts.
“These are direct offshoots of climate change, induced by mindless industrialisation in some countries. Climate change is also seriously affecting our progress towards attaining food security for our people. Climate change induced displacement of people has now become a major concern,” she said.
She told the meeting that Bangladesh has already taken up adaptation and mitigation programmes of 134 action plans, including a Climate Change Trust Fund from its own resources to finance these programmes.
In order to meet the climate change challenges, she said all nations must take immediate action on the basis of the Bali Action Plan.
Turning to MDGs, the foreign minister said there are still disparity among and within societies which is posing serious threat to social fabrics and called for intensifying collective efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
“Today, as we pass two-third of the timeline for achieving the goals and look into the quantum of progress we have made in the last ten years, we cannot be as optimistic as we had been. Again, the progress that we have made has been uneven,” she said.
Addressing the opening session, she said Bangladesh has achieved some progress in the areas of hunger, net enrolment in primary education, gender parity, infant and child mortality, immunisation coverage, supply of drinking water and sanitation.
However, she said Bangladesh needs to work more in other areas, like poverty reduction, employment generation, reducing of dropout rate in primary education, increasing adult literacy rate, empowerment of women, reduction of maternal mortality, increasing the forest coverage and spreading ICT around the country.
Turning on Bangladesh's economic growth, she said although it remained in single digit over the last several years, Bangladesh has performed well on a range of social indicators.