THE United Nations (UN) has set a very high development target for Bangladesh under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 but experts fear its financing will be a major challenge for the government, although many policy makers already claim that the country has achieved major breakthrough in many areas. Experts remain doubtful as to where the billion of dollars will come from for funding the goals when the local revenue is not enough for financing the regular annual budget forcing the government to ceaselessly borrow from banks and other public and private sources.
Experts held the view that the country needs to double domestic resources for funding the big targets in 17 SDGs areas mainly in the social sectors. But Bangladesh’s tax-GDP ratio is still low even lower than Nepal at the moment to suggest that the government local revenue collection must be higher for funding the higher development goals. But revenue collection is falling short every year. The higher development goals moreover demand higher institutional capacity to handle wider resource mobilization, which is however lacking severely to cast doubts on government ability in this regard. Moreover, as many believe to achieve hybrid growth the country should also have high level of peace and stability. The UN can’t expect Bangladesh doing excellent in achieving social goals keeping politics volatile and social peace broken.
Foremost of it, as experts said integration of the SDGs into the national planning process is important to start working with the SDGs Then developing new institutional mechanism and ensuring accountability to enhance the capacity of the government to work for accelerated growth is equally important. The government also needs to strengthen bureaucracy to increase resource utilization. It should be able to arrange concessional foreign funds; which may be increasingly difficult in ongoing political climate. There should be also boost to private and foreign investment in infrastructure and other mega projects. The government should consolidate remittance inflows as a way of local fund creation that needs again increasing manpower exports. Meanwhile, public-private investment to poverty reduction must reach more poor to support more income generation activities for better health, education and sanitation. But as it appears, the government is lacking the leadership and peace to work when corruptions, misappropriation and misuse of public fund remain the biggest impediment to growth marred by lack of accountability and transparency in the system of governance.
In our view any higher development goal is achievable – be it UN set or locally made — if the leadership of the government is honest to use resources and the institutional capacity of the nation is capable to handle the development agenda; whatever it be. Bangladesh proved capable to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and we hope it may also do well in case of SDGs provided the leadership proves capable to achieve the goals.
