Perspective Plan

This booklet on the output based activities undertaken and achievements made so far on en route to implementation and attainment of the SDGs in Bangladesh.

In the last decade, Bangladesh has greatly been benefitted from the visionary and dynamic leadership of the Hon’ble Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the way she adopted people-centred approach for the country’s development agenda. As a result, Bangladesh has achieved the highest cumulative GDP growth globally in the last ten years and made remarkable progress in various social and economic spheres and is now being recognized as the ‘development surprise’ or ‘role model of development’. The continuity in office through people’s mandate since 2009 has helped to undertake many initiatives, which resulted in building a happy, prosperous democratic country based on equality and justice.

Bangladesh, as part of her commitment to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), decided to take part in the Voluntary National Review (VNR) at the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF). We have an inspiring story to tell. We have earned many international accolades for our achievements in Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

This booklet is prepared providing a broad picture scenario on the assessment of progress made under each goal in implementation of SDGs in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has already met some of the targets set for 2020 that is noteworthy, while some indicators are on track towards meeting the target of 2020. However, there are a number of indicators those need special attention in order to move the trajectory on track. This booklet has been prepared analyzing data of 83 indicators currently available in the country. However, dearth of data has still been an emerging challenge, particularly for the indicators of SDG 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15, for monitoring the progress of attainment of SDGs in the country

The overall objectives of the study is to focus on emerging issues and challenges in Bangladesh agriculture in the context of the national objective of ensuring food security and adequate nutrition standards over the next decades.

The services sector is an integral part of the Bangladeshi economy. It provides a convenient bridge for the transformation of the rural agrarian economy to a primarily urban industrial economy. In a typical transformation path, as the agriculture sector modernizes, labor transits initially from agriculture to mainly low-skill rural and urban services. These services, mostly informal in nature, provide a cushion for labor absorption as agricultural employment shrinks. The labor thus released from agriculture eventually either retrains and gets distributed to manufacturing and modern services, or stays put in informal services. The growth of services activities and employment is primarily a function of demand. In today’s global world where labor and capital are mobile, both domestic demand and world demand matters for the expansion of the services sector.

Since its liberation after a bloody war against the Pakistani military dictatorship, Bangladesh has gone through many ups and downs but particularly since the late 1990s the country has shown great promise by pushing ahead with its development agenda vigorously. Poverty has declined rapidly and economic growth is showing an upward trend reaching between 6 and 7 percent per annum in the second decade of this century. It is realistic to expect a growth rate of 8 percent. However, technological progress and innovation, especially in the ICT sector will be crucial in achieving rapid inclusive growth.

Bangladesh has been on a transformation path with the manufacturing sector driving exports and job growth resulting in sustained robust average growth in both GDP and in per capita GDP, facilitated by some conducive policy reforms. From here on, the prospects of rapid growth with extensive job creation requires a high-performing and diversified manufacturing sector which will remain, for some time to come, the main driver of growth in Bangladesh.

The global business community now recognizes Bangladesh as a nation of dynamic first generation industrial entrepreneurs who can compete with established players in the world market – export performance of readymade garments (RMG) is the classic example. Bangladesh has become a global powerhouse in low-cost manufacturing. But profound changes are taking place in the global economy. A fast-paced technological revolution, the digital age, is under way which will eventually change the way we live, work, and interact with the global community.

The objective of this study is to determine the medium-and long-term energy needs of Bangladesh, from which sources these growing demands are expected to be met, and what should be the strategy to ensure that supply of power grows in line with the demand without becoming a constraint to growth potential of the country.

The proposed new twenty-year Perspective Plan (2021-2041) of Bangladesh envisions that the country will achieve the status of an Upper-Middle-Income country by 2031 and, more ambitiously, of a High-Income country by 2041. As befitting such high ambitions, the Plan also proposes to make Bangladesh a practically poverty-free country by the end of the plan period. It is envisioned that extreme poverty will be completely eliminated by 2031 and moderate poverty would come down to the negligible level of no more than 5 percent by 2041.

For the last few decades or so, Bangladesh has attained moderately high GDP growth with impressive progress in a number of socio-economic indicators. The country expects to graduate out of the LDC status by 2021 and aspires to reach the upper middle income status by 2030. After successful experiences of accomplishing a number of Millennium Development Goals, the country now aims at progressing towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals, targeting towards elimination of poverty, reducing inequality and empowering the less privileged groups of people. The cornerstone of such an inclusive development strategy is a robust one of job creation through employment intensive growth which will absorb the army of additional workers that will enter the labour force due to the demographic transition of the country.

Bangladesh economy’s impressive growth performance over the past two and half decades has raised hopes about the country’s graduation from the least developed country (LDC) status and its transition towards an upper middle income country in the near future. In 1990, in the global ranking of top gross domestic product (GDP) of countries (in PPP, constant 2011 US$), Bangladesh’s position was 50th. Impressively, by 2015, Bangladesh could improve its position in this ranking to 31st. According to the PWC projection, Bangladesh should become the 28th largest economy by 2030 and 23rd largest economy by 2050.

The transport sector plays an important role in the socio-economic development of Bangladesh. Bangladesh witnessed rapid growth of transport sector since independence. The overall annual growth rate was nearly 8.2 percent for freight transport and 8.4 percent for passenger transport. Even then the transport intensity of the Bangladesh is considerably lower than that of many comparable developing countries. The relative roles of transport modes are evolving with road transport expanding at the expense of railways and inland water transport because of its inherent technical and cost advantages.

Bangladesh government has embarked on a twenty years perspective plan 2021-2041 with the aim of achieving upper-middle income status by the year 2031 and higher middle income status country by the year 2046. The perspective plan sets its developmental goals with the view to eradicate extreme poverty, while attaining the status of upper middle status by 2031. It is assumed that past development achievements and favourable future growth prospects would make such goals towards realisation. However, the country faces many inherent development challenges that are documented in the national policy documents such as the 7th five year plan 2016-2020(SFYP 2015).

The Government of Bangladesh has placed utmost focus to integrate population management issues with healthcare system to ensure healthcare services for all. Initiatives have been taken to ensure availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability (4-As) of the health care system in Bangladesh. Consequently, Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in managing healthcare needs of its large population despite several resource constraints. However, there are several areas where greater attention is needed to ensure sustained human development in Bangladesh such as further improvement of maternal and child health, ensuring nutrition of mother and children, addressing youth and adolescent needs, and managing aging population. In this context, it is worthwhile to develop a long-term plan for ensuring quality health care and effective management of population along with identifying their challenges and generating implementation strategies.

The economic cost of climate change is most acutely felt in developing countries like Bangladesh, one of the world's densest nations and also one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Bangladesh has achieved recent gains in the area of economic growth (growing consistently by 6% since 1996) that could be halted due to climate change. However, a 2010 World Bank study in partnership with the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) finds that climate related disasters continue to result in large economic losses — reducing economic growth and slowing progress in reducing poverty. The report highlights that over the past decade, approximately 0.5 – 1% of GDP has been lost to damages in infrastructure, livelihoods, and from forgone production.

Urbanization and development are highly and positively correlated. Cities lead the growth engine owing to high economic density ((value-added per unit of space) and proximity to the factors of production. It is no accident that high- and middle-income countries are more urbanised and their urban areas have higher economic densities than low-income countries (Figure 1). The correlation between urbanisation and GDP is indicative of the productivity advantage of urban areas.

The basic objective of the present study is to develop a long-term strategy for productive employment in Bangladesh within the framework of the Perspective Plan for 2041. The paper is presented in three broad parts. While Part 1 provides an overview of the employment and labour market situation in the country, Part 2 looks at the future and presents projections of employment. Part 3 is devoted to developing strategies and policies for employment.

The Government of Bangladesh is in the process of formulating the Second Perspective Plan of Bangladesh (SPPB) covering the period 2021-2041. Bangladesh is at crossroads of its development journey. Bangladesh may by default continue on a relatively ‘low-level equilibrium growth path trap’ oscillating in a band between 7% annual growth on the high and 5% on the low. This will happen with continuation of current policies and institutions. Alternatively, Bangladesh could very well escape the ‘low-level equilibrium growth path trap’ and accelerate asymptotically towards a ‘higher-level equilibrium 10-11% annual growth path’ which will take it to a per capita income of $12,000 by 2041 as declared recently (June 20, 2017) by the honorable Prime Minister and possibly exceed $20,000 in 2050 both at today’s prices.