The Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 General Economics Division Planning Commission Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh The Millennium Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 General Economics Division Planning Commission Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh The Millennium Development Goals Progress Report 2009 has been benefited from the financial and technical assistance of the United Nations System in Bangladesh. The Millennium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 Design & Published by General Economics Division Planning Commission Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 Copies printed: 2500 Printed by Scheme Service Genesis (Pvt.) Ltd., Dhaka, Bangladesh The Millennium Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 Message Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) A. K. Khandker The Millennium Development Goals Minister Ministry of Planning Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh I am happy to learn that the General Economics Division (GED) of the Bangladesh Planning Commission has prepared the `Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2009’ taking inputs from relevant ministries and related stakeholders along with the technical assistance from the UN Systems. As the coming Sixty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly, inter alia, will review the latest achievements of the MDGs, the report will be supportive to do the same for Bangladesh The Government of Bangladesh is committed to achieve the MDGs within the given timeframe and accordingly prepared an action plan. The National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (NSAPR-1), the Medium Term Budgetary Framework (MTBF) and the Annual Development Programs (ADPs) have also been tuned towards achieving the MDGs. The recently revised Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (NSAPR-11) adopted a holistic approach to reduce poverty and improve other social indicators to achieve the MDGs, with special attention provided to the areas in which the country is lagging behind. Bangladesh has already initiated actions to prepare the Sixth Five Year Plan (2011-15) in pursuit of achieving the MDGs since both will coincide with the terminal year. This is the fourth publication of Bangladesh MDGs Progress Report after 2005, 2007 and 2008. The present report highlights three aspects of each of the goals, current trends, challenges in achieving the goals and future policy priorities. It Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 shows that Bangladesh has been convincingly moving towards achieving some MDGs, some of the goals can be achieved with enhanced efforts. However, some goals will need more time to be achieved. I commend GED officials for providing their efforts in preparing this report which will be beneficial for the policy makers, researchers, planners and development partners dealing with the MDGs issues. I also appreciate the UNDP for providing necessary support in finalizing the report through the “Support to Monitoring PRS and MDGs in Bangladesh” Project. Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) A. K. Khandker Foreword Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2009’ is the fourth attempt at stock- The Millennium Development Goals taking of the status of all the MDGs in Bangladesh after the reports published in 2005, 2007 and 2008. The report is prepared with the help of Thematic Working Groups constituted in concerned ministries along with the assistance from the UN System. In order to coordinate and facilitate preparation of the Bangladesh Country Report, a Steering Committee headed by Member, GED and a Working Committee headed by Division Chief, GED were constituted. The report has been prepared based on the suggestions from the Steering Committee where every goal was examined focusing on Scope, Trends, Challenges and Way forwards. Unlike the previous publications, this report has highlighted the Millennium Declaration: Democratic Governance and Human Rights as a new chapter analyzing linkages between MDGs and the Declaration. The report indicates some challenges of achieving MDGs in several key areas such as maternal health, retaining of students at the primary level to complete primary education, gender parity in tertiary education, quality issues in accessing safe drinking water and improved sanitation, The report shows that Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress in the areas of primary schooling, gender parity in primary and secondary level education, lowering the under-five mortality rate, reducing the incidence of communicable diseases and improving indicators on the environmental changes. The reduction of poverty is well posed in reaching respective targets, provided there are macroeconomic stability, economic growth and employment creation in the remaining period. However, the hunger target might not be achieved due to the challenges of food security in the country, The key challenges to future poverty reduction include lack of programme coordination and harmonization, structural constraints, lack of diversity in food crop, chronic under nutrition in children, prevalence of small pockets of high poverty and weakness in proper targeting and efficiency. The education sector faces significant challenges in achieving the targets which include reaching the marginal populations, ensuring survival rate to grade V, improving quality of primary education, increasing share of education in government budget, mitigating impact of economic and natural shocks on primary enrolment, and increasing coverage and improving quality of adolescent and adult Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 literacy programmes. Significant challenges exist in the way of achieving gender equality. These include creating effective and efficient linkage between different relevant ministries for addressing women and development issues, and addressing various socio-cultural factors that underpin their vulnerabilities. The challenges for reducing child mortality include proper implementation of policies, improving delivery of health care services, limited supply of technical and managerial manpower, limited supply of drugs and commodities, and lack of information for making strategic and policy level decision. Several challenges stand in the way of achieving MDG 5 which include inadequate coordination between health and family planning care services, improper skill mix and insufficient number of health workforce, sector planning based on insufficient data, inadequate government funding, and underlying socio-cultural factors. Notwithstanding the low incidence of the communicable diseases and the progress made, Bangladesh faces some challenges in maintaining the trend. These include inadequate coverage of Most at Risk Population, limited technical and managerial capacity and inadequate government funding in the government bodies in charge of control of these diseases, and lack of strategic information management. In case of environment, some of the important challenges are: absence of comprehensive mechanisms for the production and distribution of quality planting material and efficient use of forest resources, lack of facilitating technology, institutional support and dedicated financing to reduce greenhouse gas emission, lack of proper regulation that addresses the present gaps in fisheries sector development, poorly planned development programmes, upstream withdrawal of water, lack of policies and strategies to ensure conjunctive use of water resources, and developing water efficient agricultural practices. As clearly identified during the MDGs needs assessment and costing exercise done by GED, Bangladesh needs substantial resources to achieve the MDG. Immediate efforts need to be undertaken by Development Partners to examine the gaps and strengthen support to critical MDG- oriented sectors. Bangladesh, as the country most vulnerable to the global menace of climate change, needs to get urgent support from the US$10 billion initial fund pledged by world leaders at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Bangladesh expects to receive a 15% share of the fund to address the additional challenges that climate change poses to the MDGs gains of Bangladesh. I hope that this report will provide valuable information and analyses on the MDGs achievements status in Bangladesh to researchers, planners, academicians, development activists and all related stakeholders within the Bangladesh Government and among the development partners. Prof. Dr. Shamsul Alam Member, General Economics Division Acknowledgements ‘Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2009’ is the fourth Bangladesh The Millennium Development Goals MDGs Progress Report prepared by the General Economics Division (GED), Planning Commission, Government of Bangladesh (GOB), the UN system in Bangladesh and the five Thematic Working Groups (TWG) viz; poverty & hunger, education, gender, health and environment assisted the GED for preparation of the document. UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, WFP, IOM, ILO and WHO imparted technical assistance in preparing thematic papers. For global partnership, though it was not covered by any thematic group, the report was prepared by the GED with the assistance of UNDP. The entire report was, however, compiled and published by the GED with the technical assistance and financial support of UNDP funded Project “Support to Monitoring PRS and MDGs in Bangladesh”. The GED acknowledges the contribution of UN System in Bangladesh for their contribution during the preparation

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