Setting development priorities correct in 2021

Image: Collected
As the Covid-19 pandemic still left a deep dent in the production trajectories of Bangladesh, the country must set its development priorities best suited to 2021. Bangladesh aims to attain the stiff Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, and it aspires to be an upper-middle-income country by 2031.

However, to meet up these creation targets, Bangladesh have been confronting many development challenges even before the onset of Covid-19.

The slow progress in the structural transformation of the economy, having less export diversification, the high amount of informality in the labour industry, the slow pace of formal job creation, the weak status of physical and social infrastructure, the slow poverty reduction and rising inequality remained the critical challenges.

The Covid-19 has aggravated a number of these development challenges.

Looking back again to 2020, Covid-19, in particular, has got aggravated PIE that means three key production priorities namely poverty, inequality and employment. There is ample evidence that the poverty charge in Bangladesh has gone up drastically in 2020.

Many new poor persons may not be able to get away of poverty quickly because of various factors. For most new and outdated poor, poverty may stay as a long-position phenomenon.

Therefore, poverty will still be the foremost expansion challenge in 2021 as the economy is yet to recuperate from the shocks, source chains of various economic activities are not completely operational and the social safeguard programmes happen to be insufficient to address the sufferings of the poor.

There are also reasons to assume that Covid-19 has worsened the inequality situation in Bangladesh. In addition to the conventional elements, such as income possibilities, wealth, land-possession and corruption, which aggravate inequality, Covid-19 offers stimulated new avenues of inequality just like the digital divide. Furthermore, task losses are yet to be totally recovered, and people are either engaged in inferior careers or will be low paid.

Concerns related to PIE advise that no reason will there be to stay complacent now and in the times to come. The apparent economic and social ramifications of Covid-19 can be deceiving.

The macro-level picture of robust growth in remittance earnings, positive growth in exports and the steep increase in the forex reserves can provide rise to improper expectations of early and quick monetary recovery.

Lately, the unfavorable import growth in addition has contributed to the piling of forex reserves. The detrimental import growth isn't conducive for expenditure and business expansion - much needed for monetary recovery in the times to come.

Also, the ground-level pictures of PIE can be quite not the same as these macro pictures.

In that crisis, the expected positive spill-over effects of macro variables may continue to be weak for long. The damaged or suppressed supply chains and internet sites in the economy might take quite a long time to heal and to generate job and decrease poverty and inequality.

Therefore, as the current focus of the discourse can be more on monetary recovery, the social recovery may take a long time. The gravity of public losses might be higher than that of losses measured through monetary indicators.

The adjustment cost of recovery may also be huge. For survival, the crisis possesses forced poor-households to sacrifice leads of better overall health, better education and a much better life. You will have long-term intergenerational ramifications of these trade-offs.

As well, when schools and educational facilities possess remained closed for a few months, it is possible that pupils from distressed backgrounds will face an increased burden, and many of these will be out of your education system permanently.

At the firm level, various micro and small enterprises have already been struggling because of their survival.

Additionally, there are new challenges emerging from post-coronavirus health complications. Even though almost all of the Covid-19 damaged patients recover, many deal with various post-Covid health issues for which they need extra medical care.

The already stressed health sector desires major overhauling to handle these challenges.

What should be the development priorities in 2021?

First, the existing discourse on the creation priorities needs to transformation its focus from the narrow GDP development rate to broader production issues, i.e. poverty, employment and inequality.

Inability to effectively address these three critical development challenges can make the economic and sociable recoveries weak and fragile.

Therefore, you will find a dependence on significant growth of the allocation and coverage of social safety programmes.

Furthermore, the urgency to effectively sorting out the institutional problems in social safety programmes to attain out to poor people is as part of your.

In this context, a thorough understanding of the economical and social losses because of the pandemic is warranted.

Accordingly, the usefulness of credible and timely data cannot be overemphasised.

Second, the Eighth Five-Year Plan has to be complemented by a thorough and pragmatic recovery plan of the overall economy. There is a need to align stimulus packages with the recovery system. Many micro, tiny and channel enterprises and several vulnerable sectors happen to be feared to remain out of support through stimulus plans.

Therefore, you will find a need for an intensive reviewing of the issues and constraints in implementing the stimulus plans. This review might help re-building and re-targeting the stimulus packages. 

Third, the Covid-19 crisis time has granted the policymakers the much-warranted chance to undertake reform found in critical economic domains.

Without doubt, these reforms should aim at reducing the price tag on doing business, simplifying regulations, and faster and cost-effective implementation of the mega jobs and the SEZs, thus establishing a favourable environment for the domestic private investment and the overseas direct investment.
Source: https://www.thedailystar.net

Tags :

Share this news on:

Previous Story

Trending Topics

Archive