July 10, 2014
Development Updates
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The national annual budget for the fiscal year 2014-15 was unveiled in the parliament of Bangladesh on 5th June 2014. The size of the proposed budget is $32.42 billion, which is 12% bigger than the revised budget for the last fiscal year. Budgetary allocations which have been made to a number of important sectors apparently seem well balanced and crucial for achieving the government’s goal of 7.3% growth in GDP in the current fiscal year. The macro objective of the proposed budget is to maintain continuity of existing monetary and fiscal policy strategies and to ensure macroeconomic stability. While poverty reduction, employment generation, economic advancement of local milieu are some of the major goals from micro context.
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In recent years, Bangladesh has made significant progress in reducing poverty and the success has been well-acclaimed by the international development partners. The country has already achieved the targets meant for a hunger and poverty-free society under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In last five years, the number of poor and extreme poor came down to around 38.05 million from 50 million and 15.07 million from 28.8 million respectively. This reduction has brought economic and social well being in an equitable and sustainable manner. To carry the momentum forward, the present Government now, aims at reducing poverty rate at 22 and 15 by 2015 and 2021 respectively. Bangladesh has set a vision to eradicate extreme poverty from the country by 2021 and designed a comprehensive social protection strategy.
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Bangladesh is moving forward with the idea of digitization. Through using the best of ICTs the country is trying to deliver last mile services for the mass. In order to translate the dream of ‘Digital Bangladesh’ into reality a total number of 4501 Union Information & Service Centres (UISCs) have been established, multimedia classrooms have installed in 22,500 secondary schools and 1700 primary schools, 482 government hospitals are being provided with a cell phone to assure instant health care service; in addition to that many other services like E-Tax, E-Tendering, National E-Service System, Online Fertilizer Recommendation and lots more are on function to deliver services at people’s doorsteps.
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In 2009, the power generation capacity of Bangladesh was 4931 Mega Watts (mw). Within five (5) years, the generation capacity was raised to 10,341 mw. 62% of the population now has access to electricity. This spectacular success was achieved through long term, mid-term and short term measures adopted as part of the government’s Power Sector Master Plan (PSMP) 2010. The government now aims to provide electricity in every household of Bangladesh in the next five years. The target has been set to achieve 16,000 mw power by 2016, 18,162 mw generation capacity by 2017, and 24,000 MW power by 2021.
Youth Voice in Politics & Development
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Centre for Research and Information (CRI) organized a Policy Café with the young icon and IT Adviser to the Honourable Prime Minister, Sajeeb Wazed Joy on “Youth Entrepreneurship: The Engine for Growth”. The participants included a blend of established yet young business personalities, starters and those seeking to start an enterprise of their own. In that live telecasted event, based on a preparatory FGD, the questions-queries and suggestions primarily fell within four segments i.e. regulatory framework and policy instrument; start up investment and platforms; international & local market access and value chain; inclusive growth, HR development and research.
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SHIREE (a consortium development partner focusing extreme poverty reduction) is going to initiate a sub-project in 6 different divisional cities mainly to disseminate the contents of ‘Manifesto for the Extreme Poor’ among the local level stakeholders and to mobilize opinions. CRI is one of the partner organizations in this initiative. The role of CRI is to arrange Let’s Talk with local students in each region to gather their ideas and recommendations on eradicating extreme poverty. CRI would culminate the ideas and recommendations provided by the youth into a policy brief to be presented in a National Level Policy Café.
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From IT to social sector the young populations of the country have been maintaining a tremendous success over the last couple of years and their entrepreneurial contribution towards the country is considerable. By adopting a series of policy strategies, the government of the country, presently, intends to build up a supportive ecosystem for the youth to facilitate the tools and atmosphere to succeed. Future leadership of Bangladesh are gradually getting the windows of opportunity to do something their own under the policy support of National Industrial Policy, National SME Policy Strategies, National ICT Policy; yet many more have to done to fill up policy gaps towards accelerating entrepreneurship.
Centre for Research and Information
House 2, Road 11 (new) 32 (old)
Mirpur Road, Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1209
Tel: +88029111260, Fax: +88029111319