Business Desk :
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Friday approved a $250 million policy-based loan for Bangladesh to help finance reforms aimed at improving inclusiveness and responsiveness of the social development and resilience programme.
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty over the past two decades. Poverty incidence declined from 48.9% in 2000 to 20.5% in 2019.
But while many people were lifted out of extreme poverty, a considerable number continue to live at a subsistence level.
The coronavirus pandemic has significantly affected the socioeconomic situation of Bangladesh with the decline of the country’s gross domestic product to an estimated 5.2% in the fiscal year 2020 from 8.2% in FY2019.
“Enhancing social protection support is critical to cushioning the effects of the pandemic,” said ADB Senior Social Sector Specialist for South Asia Hiroko Uchimura-Shiroishi.
“The ADB supports the government’s intention to leverage the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen its social protection programmes as an essential means of building resilience among the poor and supporting an inclusive recovery.”
The Strengthening Social Resilience Programme will include institutional and policy reforms to address cross-sector issues of social development in Bangladesh, says a press release.
These include improving the coverage and efficiency of the social protection system through improving the administrative efficiency of social protection management.
The programme will expand its outreach to vulnerable women by increasing the coverage of both the old age allowance for women over 62 and the allowance for widowed, deserted, and destitute women in 150 upazilas.
Other reforms include promoting the use of mobile financial services and simplifying identification and documentation requirements for opening a bank account and broadening the scope of social protection from mere poverty relief to life cycle social and health responses, including social insurance system.
The ADB will also provide a technical assistance grant to support programme implementation, policy analyses, and capacity development for social development-related ministries. The technical assistance is estimated to cost $1.2 million which will be financed on a grant basis by the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction.
Moreover, the ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty.
Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members, 49 from this region.
