South Asian Journal

Contents

Bangladesh Poverty Alleviation Strategy
Dr Mizanur Rahman Shelley

Introduction
Every soul was stirred to the very depth of inner being with hopes of a sparkling morrow when Bangladesh emerged as a free and sovereign entity in 1971. It looked as an elemental force which could wash away the cobwebs of darkness and hunger that had accumulated over the centuries and it could create a whole new order of abundance, peace, dignity and increasing economic and social justice. But three and half decades later Bangladesh remains far cry from its aspirations. Everyday the sun rises in the eastern sky to reveal the same poverty and deprivation, the same inequalities, the same squalor that have been the hallmark of our landscape for centuries.

Prudent macroeconomics
In all the countries in the SAARC region, economic growth and structural transformation will be accelerated in a marketfriendly environment. These economies will achieve a sustainable growth through policy reforms enhancing efficiency and productivity. In addition, the resource utilization will be increased by expansion of production to cater to the export markets. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of these countries is targeted to increase to 6percent by the year 2010.

Achieving a high economic growth and meeting the challenges of developing in a rapidly globalising world economy requires greater focus on prudent macroeconomic policies. There are several components to such a prudent strategy. An important focus has to be on the improvement in knowledge i.e. new technology, R&D and innovations. Such a strategy will help South Asian nations adapt well to the challenges of rapid technological development and the changing global economic environment. Creating a financial healthy public sector will also be crucial to ensuring growth and economic stability. Macro financial policies have to be directed towards achieving stable exchange rates, low-interest regimes and price stability. In addition, various polices are needed to strengthen the revenue flows of the governments and eliminate wasteful expenditure. Such policies will help to keep budget deficits down and keep inflation within control. Incentives can help to boost FDI and private sector investment particularly in sectors with high growth and employment potentials. Strategies for promotion and diversification of exports fostering private-public partnerships as well as reforms in labour markets, financial and power sectors have also to be considered in line with the needs and priorities of each country.

Mainstreaming the informal economy
Growing informalisation of labour force has been an issue of great concern in South Asia. In many countries the region, employment in the informal sector comprises a significant proportion of employment. For example, in India the share of the informal sector workforce is approximately 93 percent of the total workforce. Informal employment is important for women in South Asia.

Informal economy contributes directly to poverty reduction in the region by securing the livelihoods of a large proportion of the population. Yet, in many countries, the contribution of the informal economy is invisible. There is a great need to raise the visibility of the workers in the informal economy and to develop a national policy framework to promote their contribution to the GDP, support their livelihood and protect their welfare.

The key concerns for a strategy to mainstream the informal economy are:

Reducing various impediments and barriers that restrict informal sector to enter the formal economy. For example, introduction of low and fair taxation process
Provision of identities for informal markets and business through simple and affordable registration procedures and regulations.
Provision of various infrastructure facilities- these may include roads, transport facilities, formal markets, street furniture such as benches, storage containers etc needed by various groups of informal workers such as street vendors as well as water and electricity facilities needed for home-based workers.
Provision of social protection, social security schemes and health-care for informal sector employees.
Development of support organizations which can facilitate enabling environments and champion the cause of the informal sector.
Provision of financial facilities, training, marketing and other inputs for informal sector entrepreneurs.

Sustainable development
Sustainable development is about improving the living standards of the people, not at the expense of the future generation, but to benefit them. The world's population is projected to reach nine billion by 2050 and two-thirds of them will live in cities. The demand for water, electricity, housing, education and health facilities will be enormous and South Asia will be no exception. Without prudent policies and institutions, social and environment strain can derail any short-term progress and lead to higher levels of poverty and declining quality of life.

The goal of sustainable development requires us to look at development as a multi-dimensional process embracing the following:

Adequate financial and physical capital.
Effective education and health policies and programmes.
Social capital and the empowerment of the poor.
Sensitive and intelligent natural resource management.
Private sector development.
Innovative technology policy and programmes.
Integration of environment considerations and protecting and developing environmental quality including in the growing urban landscape.

Enhancing gender and other equities
South Asia has achieved a significant but uneven progress in socio-economic development during the preceding decades. There are large and growing disparities among regional, gender, income and ethnic groups. Inequity in access to resources and social services as well as in participation in economic and political activities has been a major obstacle in faster reduction of poverty in South Asia.

Poverty encompasses deprivation in well-being, not just as measured by income or consumption poverty, but also inferior outcomes in areas like education and health, and in vulnerability and powerlessness as well1. This report takes this broader view of poverty, both in asking how it has evolved in Bangladesh in recent years, and in discussing measures to tackle it. Despite recent achievements, the analysis reveals that the magnitude of development challenges facing the country is daunting.

Livelihood
Proportion of the poor
According to Food Energy Intake (FEI) method, the poverty tendency was 44.7 percent in 1999 and it went down to 42.1 percent in 2004 on the basis of Head Count Ratio at the national level. In the same period it dropped from 43.3 to 42.1 percent in urban areas and 44.9 to 43.3 percent in villages. According to Direct Calorie Intake (DCI), poverty went down more quickly. According to DCI method, the poverty rate was 46.2 percent in 1999 and was cut to 40.9 percent in 20042.

Underweight children
The prevalence of moderately underweight children (6-71 months) has declined from 67 percent in 1990 to 51 percent in 2000, while that of severely underweight children of the same age group has been halved from 25 to 13 percent during roughly the same period. Also, the proportion of moderately underweight children under the age of five years reduced from 56 to 48 percent during the period 1997-20004.

Child malnutrition
Despite the progress, child malnutrition in Bangladesh remains among the highest in the world, and more severe than that of most other developing countries, including the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The proportion of underweight children in Bangladesh is 16 percent higher than 16 other Asian countries at similar levels of per capita GDP. Nearly half the children are underweight or stunted, with 13 to 19 percent being severely underweight or stunted in terms of being more than three standard deviations below the relevant National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS) standards. This suggests that children in Bangladesh suffer from short-term acute shortfall in food intake as well as longer-term under-nutrition. Much remains to be done in this vital area.

There are also large differences in child malnutrition rates across the economic groups. Child malnutrition is pervasive among the poor. More than 60 percent of the children 6-71 months old suffering from stunting, belong to the bottom consumption quintile. Contrary to the expectation, however, nearly a third of the children from the richest quintile also suffer from malnourishment. This suggests that factors other than income play an important role in this phenomenon.

Such factors include per capita household food intake; infant feeding practices; maternal schooling and hygiene practices; access to safe drinking water, sanitation and health facilities, quality of village infrastructure and protection against natural disasters. Presence of NGOs and public relief programs have been found to have strong correlation to reduction in child malnutrition in the lowest consumption quintile5.

Challenge:
Halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger will be a challenging task. Speeding up per capita income growth and pursuing targeted safety net programmes are needed for the expansion of household food intake6.

Strategies:
A comprehensive programme to address hunger would include interventions in the following areas7:

Promoting food security by sustaining strong growth of domestic food production and implementing a liberalized regime for food imports.
Promoting change in food habits for increasing nutritional intake of vulnerable people.
Promoting improved infant feeding practices, including breast-feeding practices.
Supporting maternal schooling and hygienic practices.
Improving access to safe drinking water, especially by addressing the threat of arsenic contamination of underground water.
Improving access to sanitation.
Improving access to basic health facilities.
Supporting safety nets for protection against natural disasters;
Promoting partnership among the government, private sector and NGOs in designing and implementing interventions to promote food security.

Halve proportion of people in poverty by 2015
To achieve MDG, Bangladesh must reduce by 2015 the proportion of population with income less than one US dollar (Purchasing power parity, PPP) a day from 58.8 percent in 1991-92 to 29.4 percent and the proportion of people in extreme poverty from 28 percent in 1990 to 14 percent by 20158.

Situational Analysis:
Poverty reduction
Bangladesh has made good progress since FY92 in reducing income poverty based on the national poverty line. The country was able to lower the overall incidence of poverty from 58.8 percent in 1991-92 to about 50 percent in 2000, or one percentage point per year. Bangladesh's good economic growth performance with overall GDP growth averaging 5 percent and per-capita growth averaging 3.3 percent per annum during FY1992-2001 contributed much to this progress. This was achieved despite a rise in inequality during the nineties with overall Gini coefficient rising from 0.259 in 1992 to 0.306 in 2000 which partly offset the positive impact of growth. In spite of the advancement, 63 million people are poor with one-third caught in hard-core or extreme poverty9.

Poverty gap (PG) and squared poverty gap 10 (SPG)
Trends in the poverty gap show a drop from 17.2 in 1991/92 to 10.9 in 2004. This suggests that even among the poor most people are now closer to the poverty line than were at the beginning of the 1990s. However, the distributionally sensitive measures (PG, SPG) declined relatively more rapidly than the poverty headcount rate. On average, rural areas did better than urban areas in reducing the depth and severity of poverty, which implies that growth in rural areas was more pro-poor than in urban areas. The urban poverty gap stood at 9.5 percent in 2000.

Inequality
Income inequality in Bangladesh rose during the nineties, particularly in urban areas. Inequality in the distribution of per capita household expenditure, as measured by the Gini coefficient, rose from 0.259 in 1991/92 to 0.306 in 2000.
Around three-fifths of total income or consumption accrues to the highest two quintiles of the population, while the lowest three quintiles receive about two-fifths. The shares are comparable to other countries of the region.

Rural and urban dimensions of poverty
Despite good progress in reducing the overall incidence of poverty in the nineties, the absolute number of poor is nearly 63 million, with poverty remaining largely a rural phenomenon. An estimated 85 percent of the country's poor 53.5 million out of a total of 62.7 million poor live in the rural areas.

Progress in reducing poverty incidence in the nineties was equal across urban and rural areas, even though average per capita expenditures increased much faster in urban areas. A sectoral decomposition of the change in national poverty incidence suggests that the rural sector, with 80 percent of the population, contributed 78 percent of the total decrease in national poverty incidence between 1992 and 2000. The urban sector contributed about 13 percent, while migration from rural to urban areas, where poverty is lower, accounted for the remaining 9 percent decline11.

Challenge and strategies
Various empirical analyses have concluded that economic growth is the most important factor contributing to poverty reduction. Achieving and sustaining strong economic growth will require attention on many fronts such as:

Pursuing monetary and fiscal policies that sustain macroeconomic stability.
Improving transparency, accountability and efficiency of the government in all key areas, including taxation, public procurement, land administration, law enforcement, administration of justice and regulation of banking, insurance, and the credit market.
Enhancing government effectiveness by focusing on core state functions and delivery of public services.
Expanding national capacity to design and enforce policies, laws and regulations that facilitate private sector investment.
Further liberalizing the trade regime to exploit the advantages of the rapidly globalizing world economy.
Restructuring and privatizing state-owned enterprises and business activities under appropriate incentive and regulatory schemes, and reallocating public resources to the provision of high priority public goods.
Accelerating development of infrastructure in key areas such as power, ports, roads, inland water transport, and telecommunications that have been identified as constraints on the investment climate.
Strengthening capacity for enhanced absorption of aid resources.

Health:
Maternal health
To achieve MDG, Bangladesh must reduce12 maternal mortality from 574 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 143 by 2015; increase the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel to 50percent, and reduce the Total Fertility Rate to 2.2 per woman by 201013.
A third target for Bangladesh is Reproductive Health (RH) Services for All as this is closely linked to maternal mortality and morbidity. The indicators for RH are maternal malnutrition and median age at marriage. The target is to reduce maternal malnutrition from 45 percent in 2000 to less than 20 percent by 2015, and to increase the median age of girls at first marriage from 18 to 20 years14.

Situation Analysis
Maternal Mortality
Though maternal mortality has declined from nearly 574 per 100,000 live births in the 1990 to between 320 and 400 in 2001315, its (MMR) in Bangladesh remains one of the highest in the world. It is estimated that 14percent of maternal deaths are caused by violence against women, while 12,000 to 15,000 women die every year from maternal health complications. Some 45 percent of all mothers are malnourished.

The population of Bangladesh is relatively young, with a third falling within the age group of 10-24 years. Nearly half the adolescent girls (15-19 years) are married, 57 percent of them become mothers before the age of 19, and half of these adolescent mothers are acutely malnourished. Thus MMR among adolescent mothers is 30-50 percent higher than the national rate.

The chief causes of maternal deaths are haemorrhage, unsafe abortion, and the 'three delays dynamics'. The first delay, arising mainly from poverty, is in seeking professional care; the second is logistical as most of the health centres and private clinics are located in district towns whereas 70 percent of the population are rural based; and the third arises from the lack of adequate human recourses and trained personnel at the service centres16.

Births attended by skilled health personnel
The number of births attended by skilled health personnel has increased from 5percent in 1990 to 12percent in 2000. In the context of Bangladesh, the increase is insignificant as the majority still do not receive such services. However, there are wide variations among income groups: 40 percent of births in the highest income quintiles are attended by skilled health personnel, compared to only four percent in the lowest quintiles17.

Total Fertility Rate
There has been a significant decline in the total fertility rate (TFR) from 6.6 per thousand live births in the mid 1970s to 3.3 in the mid 1990s with regional variations in the reduction pattern. However, in spite of a steady increase in contraceptive prevalence rate from 45 percent in 1994 to 54 percent in 2000, TFR has plateaued, partly due to adolescent fertility which is extremely high at 14.4 per 1000 live births. Several measures have been taken to address these problems. The Essential Obstetrics Care (EOC) programme through the Maternal and Child Welfare Centers (MCWC) was introduced in the early 1990s. Subsequently, a more holistic approach was adopted through the National Maternal Health Strategy 2001 which takes a rights-based approach to maternal health with Safe Motherhood as its central theme. The Strategy has been integrated into the Health and Population Sector Program, (HPSP 1998-2003) and into its follow-up the Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Program, (HNPSP 2004-2006).

Interventions such as Safe Motherhood Services that provide iron, folic acid and vitamin, supplements, have been included in the HNPSP, with the objective of reducing maternal malnutrition to below 20 percent by 2015. Other interventions under this project include training programmes for skilled health personnel.

Both the government and the donors are giving a priority to the promotion of safe motherhood from the grassroots level upwards, through antenatal care, safe delivery, pre-natal care, essential obstetrical care and family planning18.

Challenges
Bangladesh progress report (2005) on Millennium Development Goals, jointly prepared by the United Nations Country Team in Bangladesh and the Government of Bangladesh, identified the following five challenges:

Challenge 1: Reducing the Total Fertility Rate
If the population of Bangladesh stabilizes by 2035, there will be over 40 million women of reproductive age (15-45 years) in 2015 who will be the target population for preventive and awareness raising programmes on safe motherhood.

Strategies:
To further reduce TFR, studies must be conducted to analyse the causes of its stagnation. Advocacy programmes must be introduced on population stabilization.

Challenge 2: Reduce the maternal mortality ratio to 143 per 100,000 live births by 2015
If MMR is to be reduced to 143 per 100,000 live births by 2015, the decrease will have to be at substantial rates:

During 2005-2008 MMR must be reduced by 5.6 percent points a year
During 2008-2011 MMR must be reduced by 7 percent points a year
During 2011-2014 MMR must be reduced by 8 percent points a year
During 2014-2015 MMR must be reduced by 12 percent points a year

Strategies:
Meeting this challenge will require the following:

Bringing about a fundamental change in knowledge, attitude and behavior towards safe motherhood and gender equality through an advocacy campaign on safe motherhood involving 13 relevant ministries.
Increasing access to quality health facilities through public, private and NGO initiatives.
Increasing financial investments in the health sector including in skills development.
Specifically targeting the poor for reproductive health interventions, as maternal mortality and morbidity is highest in the lower income groups.
Accelerating the reduction of malnutrition, especially for females of reproductive age.

Challenge 3: Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel
If population is stabilized by 2035, 2.52 million children will be born in 2010; 2.56 million in 2013 and 2.6 million in 2015. The 2001 Bangladesh National Strategy for Maternal Health calls for 50 percent of all deliveries to be attended by skilled health personnel by 2010. This implies that 1.26 million deliveries will be attended by skilled health personnel in 201019.

Strategies:
To achieve this target, there must be a rapid increase in the rate of growth of births attended by skilled health personnel, which will in turn requires an accelerated increase in the number of trained personnel.

Challenge 4: Increasing by two years the median age of girls at first marriage
There is a significant relationship between delayed marriage and lower fertility and greater health seeking behaviour. Thus, increasing the median age of marriage of girls by two years can significantly lower adolescent fertility, reduce MMR, slow the rate of population growth, and improve the nutritional level of young mothers and children.

Strategies:
This can be achieved by providing greater access to higher education for adolescent girls through scholarship and stipend programmes. Such interventions must be accompanied by advocacy and awareness raising campaigns on safe motherhood to promote changes in attitudinal and cultural behaviour.

Challenge 5: Providing reproductive services to all by 2015
In addition to the MDG global targets, Bangladesh will also attempt to achieve the following RH target:

Halve maternal morbidity
Halve maternal malnutrition
Reduce TFR to 2.2
Improve adolescent reproductive health
Eliminate violence against women20

Strategies:
In aiming for such ambitious targets some constraints need to be taken into consideration:

Reliable national estimates are not available for morbidity. Age specific female mortality rates will serve as proxies until better parameters are identified.
The picture of maternal malnutrition is bleak in Bangladesh; 45 percent of all mothers are malnourished and only one percentage point decline has been achieved per year. In a business-as-usual scenario, by 2015, about 25 to 30 percent of mothers will still remain malnourished. It is expected that the new Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Program (HNPSP) will address some of the challenges relating to maternal malnutrition.
Adolescent reproductive health (ARH) has to receive increased attention to ensure an improved health life cycle, and to put early preventive measures to the threat of the spread of HIV/AIDS. As data on ARH is scanty, teenage (15-19 years) pregnancy and motherhood can be used as a proxy. A survey carried out in 1999-2000 shows teenage pregnancy to be as high as 35 percent. A comprehensive strategy has to be developed if it is to be almost eliminated by 2015.
Violence against women is a major concern for health, productivity, dignity and maternal mortality in Bangladesh. It is estimated that 14 percent of maternal deaths are caused by violence. Inclusion of this indicator when monitoring the MDGs will help raise awareness of this national problem. It will also promote quantitative methods for monitoring the progress towards the elimination of violence against women.

Child health
MDG indicates that under-five mortality rate must be reduced from 151 deaths per thousand live births in 1990 to 50 in 201521.

Situation Analysis:
Under-five Mortality
While there has been an appreciable drop in under-five death rates from 151 deaths per thousand live births in 1990 to 87 in 1999, the rate has since slowed considerably, with the figure standing at 82 in 2001. From this base, it will be necessary to maintain a pace of annually reducing under-five deaths by at least three deaths per thousand live births to achieve MDG by 2015.

Child mortality rate is a reflection of the care, health and nutrition status of children below the age of five years and also indicates the social, cultural, and economic progress in the country.

In the case of under-fives, neonatal and perinatal causes contribute to 48 percent of the deaths. Other factors include very low rates of institutional deliveries (8.6percent), low attendance of deliveries by skilled personnel (12percent), and low utilization of antenatal care (48percent). More than 71 percent of these neonatal deaths were due to noncommunicable diseases, mainly birth-related ailments as well as neonatal tetanus.

Other major causes of under-five deaths are pneumonia (18percent), diarrhoea (6percent), injuries and drowning (8percent), and measles, with malnutrition underlying most other causes (13percent). Poor care-seeking behaviour and practices are also important contributing factors. Only 8 percent of parents of sick children under the age of five seek care from qualified health care providers22.

In order to reduce deaths from diarrhoea, the oral rehydration therapy (ORT) campaign has been in effect for several decades. The use of oral rehydration solution (ORS) has increased from 62 percent in 2000 to 68 percent in 2003.

Malnutrition contributes to more than one half of child deaths, with low birth weight estimated to affect 30 to 50 percent of infants. Over the years, appropriate interventions have helped to reduce the proportion of underweight children from 66.5 percent in 1990 to 51.1 percent in 2000, and child stunting from 65.5 to 48.8 percent. But prevalence of child stunting and underweight is very high according to WHO criteria.

To address child malnutrition, it is essential to improve the nutritional status of adolescent girls and mothers, because if mothers are malnourished, their children are much more likely to have low birth weight, and to remain malnourished throughout their lives. Although chronic energy deficiency in non-pregnant women has declined from 52 percent in 1997 to 45 percent in 2000, it remains unacceptably high. Since 1997, the prevalence of night blindness, an early indicator of Vitamin A deficiency, has been maintained below the one percent threshold that indicates a public health problem. This success has largely been due to the Vitamin A supplementation programme, which increased coverage from 41 percent in 1993 to over 85 percent in the second half of the decade by linking the distribution of Vitamin A capsules with the (National Immunization Day) NIDs. Coverage of iodized salt increased from 19 percent in 1993 to 70 percent in 1999, and correspondingly, the prevalence of iodine deficiency fell from 69 to 43 percent. While these findings are encouraging, they mask infants and children consuming diets that are grossly inadequate in Vitamin A, iron and other micro-nutrients. Anaemia, which is largely due to iron deficiency, affects about 50 percent of under-five children, a prevalence level that denotes a severe public health problem. Breastfeeding is rarely exclusive for the first six months of life, and complementary foods are often introduced too early or too late and are of poor quality.

There is urban-rural difference in under-five mortality rates. In 2001, the rate in urban areas was 52 percent while in rural areas it was 89 percent. Similarly, there is also difference in under-five mortality rate between boys and girls. In 2001, the under-five mortality rate for boys was 84 percent and for girls 81 percent.

There has been an epidemiological transition of mortality pattern in Bangladesh. Due to the relative decline in deaths caused by infectious diseases, statistics now reveal that injuries and accidents are also important causes of deaths. For example, 8 percent of all under-five deaths and 30 percent of total deaths among children aged 1-4 years have been found to be caused by injuries and accidents such as drowning23.

Infant Mortality
The trend shows that there has been a steady decline in the infant mortality rate (IMR) from 94 per thousand live births in 1990 to 56 per thousand in 2001. About two-thirds of infant mortality are from neonatal deaths which are a direct consequence of factors such as low birth weight, pre-term delivery and birth asphyxia. It is estimated that to achieve the goal of 32 deaths per thousand live births, the current declining rate must be sustained. That is, infant death rates must be reduced annually by at least two deaths per thousand live births between 2005 and 201524.

Immunization
Access to vaccination has been among the foremost interventions that have helped reduce mortality rates in Bangladesh. National Immunization Days (NID) have been observed for many years and have proved very successful. Since 2001 not a single case of wild poliovirus transmission has been confirmed in the country. The percentage of fully immunized children increased from 53 percent in the 1990s to 69 percent in 2000 but the coverage remains below expectations. In 2003 BCG coverage was 96 percent while measles coverage was only 69 percent.

The reasons for the low rates from the demand perspective, include drop-outs resulting from the lack of awareness of the need for immunization, lack of information on the medical aspects of the vaccines, and distance of the vaccination centres. From the supply side, the low rates arise from the absence of medical personnel in the health centres, irregular review of the immunization programme and inadequate supervision costs.

To offset some of these problems, supplementary immunization activities have been introduced and currently 86 percent of new-borns are protected at birth against neonatal tetanus. Since 2003, under the Expanded Programme of Immunization, Hepatitis B vaccination has been introduced, along with the use of auto destruct syringes. The programme has been activated in seven districts and one City Corporation, and by 2005 will cover all districts in the country25.

Challenge 1: Cost of immunization
The multi-year EPI plan estimates that to fully immunize the under-one population at 80 percent per annum will require US$57 million per year. An additional US$ 5.2 million per year will be required for scaling up the Integrated Management of Childhood Diseases (IMCI), an important component of the Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Programme (HNPSP) that addresses childhood mortality. The nutrition component of the same programme is estimated to cost US$36.9 million annually. The cost of other related programmes will add to the financial requirements.

Challenge 2: Sustaining Success
Success has been achieved in Bangladesh because of the close attention paid to infectious and parasitic diseases in the past two decades. This should be maintained.

Strategies:
To achieve this MDG by 2015 this momentum has to be sustained by:

Consolidating and strengthening achievements in on-going interventions that address fundamental causes of childhood mortality. These include routine immunization, and control of diarrhoeal diseases, and acute respiratory infection.
Accelerating the pace of reduction in neonatal mortality through ensuring antenatal care, skilled attendance at birth, and emergency obstetrics care for those in need.
Enhancing the effectiveness of interventions for reducing malnutrition among children and women, with a special focus on adolescent girls, through bridging deficiencies of both macro and micro-nutrients (especially iron and iodine).
Exploring interventions required to address the contemporary causes of mortality, i.e., accidents and injuries, specially drowning.
Strengthening partnerships between the Government, NGOs, specialized agencies and local government institutions.
Integrating vertical programmes for reduction of childhood mortality such as ARI and CDD, to achieve efficiency gains for both care seekers and providers.
Focusing on consumer awareness and communication strategies for promoting behavioural change.
Ensuring need-based-targeting of un-reached and un-served populations, especially for area-specific health and nutrition interventions in urban slums, the Chittagong Hill Tracts and coastal areas.
Strengthening the management information system through establishing a database for informed decision support, information gaps, consistency and veracity.

Affordable health-care
Key targets for affordable health-care set by ISACPA include access to primary health-care services in every village/island run by paramedics, access to affordable medicine including essential and alternative medicine (i.e. Ayurvedic, Unani and Homeopathy), training of rural medical practitioners, including those practicing alternative medicine and awareness raising programmes to combat major diseases26.

Situation Analysis:
Accessibility of health facilities:
Data from the rural community questionnaires in the 1995-96 and 2000 Household Expenditure Survey (HES) were used to assess changes in the accessibility of health infrastructure. Not all categories are comparable across the two surveys, though the ones that are do suggest improvements in regard to various health facilities. For example, the average distance to a satellite clinic decreased from 9.9 to 8.0 km. between 1995-96 and 2000, when accessibility of private health care service providers also improved significantly. Pharmacies the most commonly used health facilities were also found to be the most accessible. However, while community-level data on average distance to health facilities was not collected in urban areas, data from the household survey module indicate that users of government facilities in rural areas on average travel and wait 1.5 times longer than their urban counterparts. Rural residents continue to be comparatively disadvantaged in access to health facilities, though the differential appears to be considerably lower than in many other counties27.

Access to essential drugs:
According to WHO, as of 1997, at least one-third of the world's population still lack access to essential medicines, either because they are not available, are too expensive, or because there are no adequate facilities or trained professionals to prescribe them. In poorer areas of Asia and Africa this figure may be as high as one-half. Various estimates indicate that in 1997, about 80 percent of the people of Bangladesh had sustainable access to affordable essential drugs.

According to the Directorate of Drug Administration, in 2002, all the essential drugs in the local market were produced locally utilizing about 45 percent of the production capacity of the local pharmaceutical industries. About 85 percent of the raw material used in the local production are imported. Being a drug exporting, least developed country, Bangladesh, has a unique position in the region, of not being required to adhere to the TRIPS Agreement until 201628.

Challenges:
Challenge 1: Average distance to health facilities should be reduced
One of the major problem of the rural people of getting the health service of the distance of the health facilities. In many areas the communication system is not good. It makes more difficult for the patient to get treatment.

Challenge 2: Facilitate required equipment for treatment
At many health centres, the required equipment for the treatment is either not available or it does not work properly. This situation should be changed immediately.

Challenge 3: Facilitate the treatment of some critical health problems that the people mostly suffer in all the health centres
In short-term it is difficult to facilitate specialized doctors for all the areas. But we can train the health workers on some critical health problems people mostly suffer from. At least we can make them capable of giving primary treatment and suggesting the way of farther treatment.

Challenge4: Ensuring access to essential affordable drugs
The problems in ensuring access to essential affordable drugs are procurement, quality control, distribution and utilization of drugs.

Strategies:

More investments are required to establish more health centers and to facilitate the required equipment.
Special training programm should be launched to train health workers on the critical health problems people mostly suffer.
As there is capacity and resource constraints in the public sector, government should do more to involve non-government institutions and grass-root organizations by contracting out provision of services for the hard-to-reach poor.
The revised National Drug Policy (NDP) is expected to reiterate the commitment of the Government and the local pharmaceutical companies to ensuring the access of the people to affordable essential drugs.

Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS Situation Analysis:
It is estimated that the prevalence rate of HIV infection among adults (15-49 years) is less than 0.1 percent. As of end November 2003, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported a total of 363 cases. However, as there is no functional reporting system on HIV/AIDS and the information remains incomplete, Bangladesh is classified as a low HIV prevalence country. Nevertheless, latest surveys indicate a rapid increase of HIV positivity among injecting drug users (IDUs) from 1.7 percent in 2000 to 4 percent in 2002. Such concentrated HIV epidemic can have far reaching implications on HIV transmission to other vulnerable populations in the community29.

Challenges and strategies:
In Bangladesh progress report (2005) on Millennium Development Goals, jointly prepared by the United Nations Country Team in Bangladesh and the Government of Bangladesh, identified the following challenges and strategies to overcome the challenges:

While Bangladesh has a relatively low HIV prevalence, there are many factors that make it particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. They include socio-economic and cultural factors that can only be addressed effectively through a multisectoral and multi-dimensional approach. Sentinel surveillance remains key to follow trends of HIV infection and behaviour change as well as to monitor the outcome and impact of responses to HIV/AIDS.
Essential policy review and legal/law reform to enhance enabling environment and the impetus for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support need to be promoted and facilitated by the different stakeholders.
Initiatives should be intensified to mainstream HIV/AIDS into different public and private sectors and to ensure effective leadership support and involvement at all levels in advancement of appropriate measures to deal with HIV/AIDS.
Since HIV/AIDS is a development concern all development and health programmes such as PRSP, Sector Wide Approach( SWAp )and Health, Nutrition and population Sector Programme (HNPSP) are expected to accord due prominence to and coverage of HIV/AIDS.

Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and tuberculosis
To achieve this target, Bangladesh will have to halve the one million people afflicted by malaria annually and reduce the number of deaths from one percent to half a percent by 2015. Also, by 2005, Bangladesh will have to increase the success rate of detection of tuberculosis cases under DOTS from 34 percent in 2000 to 70 percent, and the cure rate from 84 percent to 85 percent30.

Situation Analysis
Malaria
Malaria is one of the major public health problems in Bangladesh. Out of 64 administrative districts, 13 belong to the high-risk malaria zone. An estimated one million clinical cases of malaria are treated every year. During 2002, the Annual Parasitic Incidence was 4.2 in the high endemic districts, leading to 61,495 laboratory-confirmed cases, and 598 reported deaths. Plasmodium falciparum is the predominant infection (61-71percent) and An. dirus the principal vector. The current programme aims to reduce by 50 percent the incidence of cases and the number of deaths from malaria by the year 201531.

Challenges and strategies:
Scaling up Insecticide treated netting (ITN) programme to achieve coverage up to 70 percent of 14.7 million High-Risk population, especially in the remote, poor and tribal families remains a major challenge32. To overcome the problem of drug resistance effective treatment and rapid diagnostic tests need to be introduced. To be fully effective, the programme must substantially increase the number of trained manpower and malaria experts, at various levels.

Tuberculosis
Situation Analysis
Bangladesh ranks fourth on the list of the 22 highest TB burden countries in the world. In 2002, the incidence of all cases and of new smear-positive cases was estimated to be 233 and 105 per 100,000 respectively. About 70,000 patients die of TB each year. Bangladesh is committed to the 2005 international targets of detecting 70 percent and curing 85 percent of the detected smear-positive patients.

Eighty four percent of cases diagnosed in 2001 were cured under DOTS. In 2002 the case-detection rate of new smear-positive cases was 34 percent. Of the new smear positive patients, the M/F ratio was 1:0.44, which indicated an under diagnosis of female cases. Increased detection and cure of females will have a considerable impact on maternal mortality as TB has been found to be the major cause of maternal death in high TB burden, low-income countries33.

Challenges and strategies:
The major challenge is to simultaneously increase case detection, maintain a high cure rate, and improve the quality of the diagnostic services. This calls for strengthening the management at central, divisional and district levels, intensifying effective partnerships and collaboration, expanding diagnostic and treatment services, implementing quality assurance of smear microscopy and BCG strategies, and strengthening monitoring and evaluation. Other essentials include human resources development and uninterrupted supply of drugs and laboratory provisions.

Improved hygiene and public health
Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation identifies some key targets for improved hygiene and health. Key targets include access to safe drinking water and sanitation, raising awareness of important aspects of public and social hygiene e.g. washing of hands after visiting latrines, avoiding spitting and defecation in the open etc., effective enforcement of laws on banned substances34.

Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water and basic sanitation
percent to 100 percent in urban areas and from 76 percent (arsenic-adjusted estimate) coverage to 96.5 percent in rural areas by 201535.
In addition, access to improved sanitation must be increased from 75 percent to 85.5 percent in urban areas, and from 39 percent to 55.5 percent in rural areas by 2015.

Situation Analysis
In the case of Bangladesh, this MDG was modified to highlight the crucial role that access to water and to sanitation play in maintaining a healthy and productive population. Besides the global indicator of the proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source, a second indicator was included - the proportion of urban and rural population with access to improved sanitation.

Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source
This indicator is defined as the percentage of the population who use any of the following types of water supply for drinking: piped water, public tap, borehole or pump, protected well, protected spring or rainwater. By this definition nearly 100 percent of the population in Bangladesh has access to water. However, over the last few years thousands of tube-wells have been found to be contaminated with naturally-occurring arsenic at higher than WHO-recommended levels. If quality is taken into account, access to safe water drops to only 72 percent in rural areas. In spite of the fact that this is good coverage by developing country standards, it implies that 30 million people remain without access to safe water. Coverage in urban areas is 82 percent36.

Proportion of the urban and rural population with access to improved sanitation
In rural areas access to improved sanitation has increased from 11 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2002. In the case of urban areas however, the situation has deteriorated, coverage dropping from 71 percent to 56 percent. This is mainly due to unbridled and unplanned urbanization that has been taking place in recent years.

Although technologies such as sewers, septic tanks, pour-flush latrines, simple pit latrines, and ventilated improved pit latrines contribute towards the achievement of target 10, additional factors also need to be taken into consideration. For example, it is essential in the case of simple pit latrines that excretes are adequately treated before being discharged into the environment.

Even in towns and cities with sewerage systems, discharges are passed untreated directly into the environment. Solid waste disposal remains an environmental sanitation hazard, especially in the urban areas.

The government recognizes the importance of increasing access to sanitation. Following a major initiative that culminated in the South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) Conference in Dhaka in October 2003, the Government declared its own target of achieving 100 percent sanitation coverage by 2010, and has allocated two percent of its annual development budget for the task37.

In the year 2003, there was the occurrence of 42 percent spitting and defecation in the open place but it reduced to 20 percent by 2005. 70 percent of money was financed by the public of the creation of these large amounts of latrine.

Challenge 1: Ensuring 100 percent coverage of safe water
To be able to ensure nearly 100 percent coverage by 2015, at least 25 million people must gain access to arsenic-free, safe water over the next 10 years. This is a considerable challenge, since there is no effective solution for communities which are highly affected by arsenic. Technologies for removing arsenic from water are in the process of being introduced on a large scale.

Strategies:
As each option has some disadvantage for removing arsenic, communities and individuals will have to learn to use water from different sources for different purposes, if their water demands are to be met at a viable cost.

This requires a level of sophistication by the consumer which has not been necessary in the past. Resources will therefore be required, not only to support the installation of water sources, but also to raise awareness and train communities in appropriate water use.

In the longer term, other issues are likely to arise in relation to access to safe water. In particular, there is growing concern regarding the availability of groundwater. Currently groundwater is used widely for irrigation, leading to a lowering of the water table. A proper groundwater management strategy will be necessary to safeguard the resource. Other problems include water salinity in coastal areas.

Challenge 2: Ensuring access to basic sanitation
If the health benefits of sanitation are to be fully realised, good hygiene practices such as hand washing at critical times are crucial. It is important therefore to monitor indicators that include latrine coverage, the condition and use of sanitary facilities, and the adoption of good hygiene practices.

Strategies:
Regular national sanitation surveys can be used for tracking these indicators including the treatment of sewage and the collection and disposal of solid waste.

Challenge 3: Resources needed to meet the Target
It is estimated that US$64 million will be required to meet the water and sanitation goals by 201539.

Strategies:
To be most effective, national processes such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the Pro-Poor Strategy and the Sector Development Framework should coordinate efforts by the government, NGOs and other stakeholders to achieve and even surpass the targets for water and sanitation under the various development initiatives.

Those sections of population who continue to be excluded from programmes that provide access to safe water and sanitation should be especially targeted. Strategies need to ensure that the poor and marginalized, such as slum dwellers in urban areas, are supported in appropriate ways.

Education
The Compulsory Primary Education Act, 1990, has made primary education in Bangladesh free and compulsory for all children. The Government is committed to the goals of the Dakar Framework Education for All (EFA) which aims at achieving the MDG targets by the year 2015. The National Plan of Action (NPA) also aims to achieve the six EFA Dakar goals by 201540.

To achieve MDG, Bangladesh must increase the primary school enrolment rate from about 73.3 percent in 1992 to 100 percent by 2015, increase the primary school completion rate from 62 percent in 1994 to 100 percent by 2015, and reduce the dropout rates from 38 percent in 1994 to 0 percent by 201540.

Enrolment to primary/community school for all children:
Various data sources indicate that between 1994 and 2003 the primary school net enrolment rate has oscillated around 80 percent for 6-10 year old children. While the range indicates that the rates have been slightly higher for females (83-84percent) compared to males (81-82percent), the female rates show a plateauing trend. Improvement in the enrolment rates was due to increase in the government's budgetary allocation for girls' education, free primary education, massive stipend programmes at the primary level, and the Food for Education Programme.

In order to promote further equity and access of underprivileged children to primary education, the government replaced the Food for Education programme with a five year country-wide Primary Education Stipend Project. However, some 2.4 million 6-10 year old children are still not enrolled in primary schools. Taking into account demographic considerations and the rate of population growth, it is estimated that to meet MDG by 2015, the primary school enrolment rate should increase annually at a rate of 1.25 percent point for girls and 1.5 percent point for boys41.

Completion of the primary education cycle:
While out drop rates in the primary school cycle have fallen from 38 percent in 1994 to 33 percent in 2004, the rates have been found to be higher (36percent) in government schools compared to private ones (13percent). Among those who are not enrolled and those who have dropped out, a significant number comes from poor households and lives in rural areas, urban slums, coastal areas and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).

Repetition rates remain high (39percent), implying that on average, a child needs 6.6 years to complete a five-year primary education cycle. Attendance rate in the year 2000 was about 58 percent, with girls having a slightly higher (60percent) attendance rate compared to boys (57percent).

Primary school completion depends on the ability of the system to prevent drop-outs and successfully deliver education services. Historically there is evidence of a strong upward trend. This has to continue to achieve the targets42.

Adult Literacy
Various estimates indicate that adult (15 years +) literacy rate during 1990 - 2002 ranged between 37 and 61 percent, with urban rates higher (64percent) than rural (46percent). In spite of women's literacy rate increasing steadily since 1990, male rates remained higher (61percent) than female (43percent) in 200043.

Quality of Education
Although primary school completion rates show an increasing trend, there is concern over the quality of education and the competency level of primary school graduates. The reasons for the lack of quality in education services include insufficient contact hours and unfavourable student-teacher ratio. The contact hours of 120 minutes per day for classes I-II and 240 minutes for classes III-V are significantly low compared to those in the countries in the region. Moreover, the 59 students to one teacher ratio is unfavourable to maintaining quality education. The ratio is more skewed in government primary schools (66 students to a teacher) compared to private schools (43 students to a teacher). Population demographics and government efforts to achieve the EFA targets, indicate that this unfavourable trend will increase over the years unless proper balancing measures are introduced.

The government interventions for improving the quality of primary education are concentrated in five areas organizational management, schools and classrooms, infrastructure development, support to equitable access, and management and monitoring44.

The Cost of Achieving the goal
In order to estimate the cost of achieving the goal, three population scenarios were considered population stabilizing by 2035, by 2040, and by 2050. The financing was derived from three primary sources: households, government and external. At the most optimistic scenario of population stabilization by 2035, to achieve this MDG nearly 17 million children will have to be covered in 2005, and in 2015, 213 million will have to be reached. For the least optimistic scenario of population stabilization by 2050, the target population to be covered will reach 220 million in 2015.

Under the circumstances, if population stabilizes by 2035, the total primary education programme cost will require $928 million in 2005, steadily increasing to an amount of $1.7 billion in 2015. Of this expenditure domestic financing must cover US$ 564 million in 2005, rising to over one billion dollars in 2015. The parallel external financing needs will be $364 million dollars in 2005, culminating at $666 million in 201545.

Challenges
The situation analysis of primary education in Bangladesh indicates a positive trend towards the achievement of this MDG. To ensure that this trend continues several challenges will have to be met by the development partners.

Challenge 1: Meeting the cost of education
Under the most optimistic scenario of population stabilization by 2035, Bangladesh will need $928 million in 2005, the amount increasing annually to reach $1.7 billion by 2015 to maintain the momentum for achieving this MDG. About 40percent of this will need to come from external financing. That is, external financing needs in 2005 will be $364 million increasing annually to reach $666 million in 2015. Government share of the cost will be $352 million in 2005, rising to $669 million in 2015.

Challenge 2: The primary school enrolment rate has to grow at a rate of 1.25 percent point a year for girls and 1.5 percent point for boys
One of the main challenges to be faced by the development partners is the stabilization of population to ensure containment of expenditure and to provide quality primary level education. It is estimated that if population is stabilized earliest by 2035, more than 8 million girls and 11 million boys will need to receive primary education in 2015.

Taking into account the rate of population growth of relevant age groups, and the enrolment and drop-out rates, it is estimated that to reach nearly 100 percent by 2015, the primary school enrolment rate has to grow annually at a rate of 1.25 percent age point for girls and at 1.5 percent age point for boys46.

Challenge 3: The excluded population
Among those who are not enrolled and those who have dropped out, a significant number come from poor households and live in rural areas, urban slums, coastal areas and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). It is estimated that they are some 2.4 million in number. These children must be brought into the national compulsory primary education system.

Challenge 4: Quality education
The I-PRSP projection of public expenditure on education as percentage of GDP indicates a gradual increase from 2.62 percent in FY2004, to 2.81 percent in FY2005, and to 2.93 percent in FY200647. If this scenario is realized and the GDP grows at the current rate and the National Plan of Action on education is implemented according to schedule, the quality and quantity of education can be improved to achieve the MDG for primary education. Additional support will however, also be needed for technical and managerial capacity building of the government departments and NGOs at all levels.

Challenge 5: Late entry into the schooling system
Late entry into the schooling system is widespread and potentially curtails enrollment and attainment. Analyzing school attendance in Bangladesh by single-year age group provides some interesting insights into the pattern of school enrollments in the country. Based on data from data from the 2000 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), about ninety percent of children aged 9 years were found to be attending school, but the share was as low as fifty percent amongst those aged 6 years. The proportion of children attending school rises steadily with age. However, late entry into the schooling system means that overall roughly one out of four children aged 6-10 years are currently not in school, and a sizeable fraction of the school-going aged children are enrolled in a grade behind their target-age grade48.

Challenge 6: Governance
Governance is a key constraint on improving the quality of education expenditures. A recent survey on governance problems in Bangladesh found growing dissatisfaction among the parents of school children with the quality of education in general and most acutely with schools at the primary level. Where 22 percent had registered their unhappiness with education standards in a similar survey five years ago, 30 percent took the negative view in the current survey. Underlying the dissatisfaction with publicly funded education were some perceptions of corruption and negligence in the Directorate of Primary Education, general concerns about the influence of wealth on access to schooling and specific complaints about teachers giving private students priority over public ones. Another weakness in the system appears to be the supply of textbooks, especially in rural areas where 67 percent of the households report difficulties in getting textbooks. The main problems cited were delayed supply (39 percent), extra payment (40 percent) and the need to buy textbooks instead of getting them free of cost (17 percent)49.

Strategies:

Raise the amount of public resources development of basic education.
Continue to improve access and equity.
Establish better partnerships with relevant stakeholders ( parents, communities, non-government institutions, etc) to improve quality of education services.
Provide adequate teacher training and other needed pedagogical inputs.
Undertake better assessments of learning and outcomes.
Arrangement of a minimally rational school infrastructure, i.e. 1 room each for each of the five primary grades.
Improve management and accountability, reduce corruption and waste and de-politicize the education system.
Decentralization of management at primary and secondary levels to improve governance.
Investment:

Investment:
With the growth of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the last couple of years, Bangladesh has advanced to the 122nd position from the previous 133rd in the World Investment Report (WIR) 2005 index of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). The report said improved investment environment and the privatisation of assets are the reasons behind the high FDI flow in Bangladesh in 200450.

Net foreign direct investment (FDI) in Bangladesh rose by 72 percent to US$ 460 million in 2004, up US$ 195 million from 2003, said World Investment Report 2005.The growth is the second highest in South Asia while Pakistan secured the first position with 74 percent FDI growth in the same period. The report forecast increased FDI inflow in the coming years primarily because of a rise in investment by India51.

Board of Investment (BOI) of Bangladesh and Tata Group of India signed an Expression of Interest (EOI) regarding BOI facilitation of Tata's investment proposal of about US$ 2.0 billion52. Tatas expressed their keen interest investmenting in basic steel, power and fertilizer. Egyptian telecom giant Orascom already has invested $150 million in Bangladesh's mobile phone sector and another $150 million is expected by early 2006. Dubai-based Abu Dhabi Group plans to pump about $800 million into the country's telecom sector and proposes to invest more than $2 billion in the country's burgeoning pharmaceutical and tourism sectors over the next two to three years. In the natural resources sector, High-Tech International Group of Saudi Arabia is considering a $2 billion deal to set up oil refinery plants in Bangladesh over the next two to three years. Negotiations are also under way with China Metallurgical Construction group to set up a $200 million methanol plant. US oil company UNOCAL, already a player in Bangladesh's energy industry, is expected to invest more than $40 million this year to develop a natural gas field. Taiwanese Textile industry is also expected to invest up to a billion dollars in Bangladesh's textile sector starting from 2006.

United Nations resident coordinator in Bangladesh Jorgen Lissner, expressed his guarded optimism over the future investment scenario of Bangladesh. Terming the country the Asian Tiger, Lissner said: " (But) the tiger can not jump or leap forward." He said Bangladesh had many positive achievements, including laudable export growth, strong inflow of remittances sent by expatriates and comfortable foreign exchange reserves. "Bangladesh could have been a good fisherman had not its rivers been polluted." he said. Lissner said that Bangladesh should address issues such as political disputes, general strikes and corruption to sustain and enhance its achievements53.

Though World Investment Report (WIR) 2005 index of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) indicates the advancement of Bangladesh, it has to go far ahead. The government of Bangladesh, in its Industrial Policy 1999, offered a number of incentives for private investors, particularly for foreign investors. The key features of the policy are:

Foreign entrepreneurs will enjoy the same facilities as local investors in of tax holiday, payment of royalty, technical know-how, fees, etc.
Full repatriation of capital invested from foreign sources, profits and dividends will be allowed.
If foreign investors reinvest their repatriable dividends or retained earnings, those will be treated as new investment.
Foreigners employed in Bangladesh are entitled to remit up to 50percent of their salary and will enjoy facilities for full repatriation of their savings and retirement benefits.
Work permit will be issued to foreign nationals on recommendation of investing foreign companies or joint ventures without any restriction.
Prospective foreign investors and their expatriate employees will be issued multiple entry visas.
Foreign investment in small industrial units will be given priority in the allocation of plots in BSCIC Industrial Estates.
Measures will be taken to protect the intellectual property rights of new products and process.
International arrangements and provisions will guide investment guarantee and dispute settlement.
Duty free import of raw materials, machinery, construction and other materials used in manufacturing process will be allowed.
Tax exemptions on interest on foreign loans as well as on profits on account of transfer of shares by foreign companies listed with the Stock Exchange will be given.

Investors are of the view that while government policies look very good on paper, the problems lie in their implementation. There is always a long delay in transmitting policy decisions from the policy-making level to the implementation level. So the government should take steps to the proper implementation of the policies. The following recommendations should be into under consideration:

All measures under existing laws should be undertaken to improve the law and order situation and curb political unrest to provide security to investors.
All illegal trade union activities and unfair practices by labour unions/CBAs must be severely dealt with under the existing laws.
One Stop Service in Board of investment provide by nine organizaions should be made effective by strategic delegation of powers to Members of the Team and with the needed prompt back-up managerial support from the concerned parent bodies.
All investment related laws which have not yet been updated may be updated at the earliest in the light of present day requirements. Cumbersome legal procedures of dispute settlement should be remedied soon.
Government may encourage the private sector to promote a congenial working environment for women workers including provision of accommodation, low cost day-care centres and health care for their infant children near industrial centres.
Government may contract out many of its functions to private sector, such as collecting, compiling and disseminating data and information on industrial development, tax incentives, monetary and financial matters, etc.
All industrial parks whether in the public or in the private sectors should be encouraged to organize their own security systems, and to promote mini-utility companies for reliable supply of power, water, gas and other essential utility services.
Bangladesh missions abroad should boost up and improve the image of the country to attract foreign investment.
Necessary measures should be taken to facilitate the introduction of E-trade and E-commerce to ensure security of transactions and prevent fraud and fraud and forgery and strengthen the institutional capacity of business organizations.
The on-going banking reform programme should be pushed ahead with relentless vigor in order to tackle, as soon as possible, the serious problems of bad debts, inadequacy of capital and classified loan54.

Investment in the targeted sector:
The arms race is a worldwide phenomenon. It represents a waste of resources a diversion from the humanitarian development efforts and a threat to democratic process. Exacerbated by the population explosion, the food crisis and the devastation's of natural disasters and war, the problems of eradicating poverty and of improving standards of health, nutrition, education and housing have reached a stage of crisis in many parts of the world. No less important problems are those of industrialization and growth in developing countries, of combating and degradation of the environment, of developing new sources of energy and raw materials while preserving available sources, of halting the degradation of cities and many others. The vast benefits which could result from even trifling cuts in military expenditures and reallocation of the funds thus saved are obvious55.

As for a developing country like Bangladesh it is unnecessary to spend so much on high military expenditure. Defence and internal security are important; expenditures have to be kept to the minimum. Such expenses in unproductive sectors do not add to the growth of production, the government spending in the sectors is still unacceptably high56. A statistical data is given below about the military expenditures of the past years57.

The expenditure has been increasing gradually from the past years. In the 2002-03 budget, 39bn taka/ US$ 645m (approximately) was allocated for defence expenditure which was 8.8percent of revenue income. For the Fiscal Year 2005-2006, the proposed budget of Tk 4320 crore/ US$ 720m showed an increase of Tk 419 crore /US$ 68m over FY 2004-05 which was Tk 3901 crore/ US$ 652m58.

There are also a huge amount of hidden expenses allocated in defence budget. In a round table meeting regarding “ The revenue expenditure in the non-productive sectors in the national budget of Bangladesh versus human development” Abul Barkat said that the hidden expenditure should never be disclosed to the public. He mentioned that the buying of 8 Mig-29 plane by 1000 crore taka by the previous government was not on priority. In the round table it was mentioned that by that money Bangladesh could eradicate Tuberculosis and Leprosy or decrease maternal death 4.33 to 1.5 or decrease child morality 57 percent to 35 percent or can employ 15,000 primary school teacher for 20 years or can increase 14 percent coverage of irrigation which will increase 20percent food production.

The office of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has raised 31 audit objections involving Tk 48.33 crore to the expenditure on defence , while a CAG office report placed in parliament but the defence ministry has not yet replied to any of those60. The CAG office detected the irregularities mainly in the defence ministry's pooling resources and in distributing those among army, navy and airforce in FY 1997 to 2002. The repot said it found that a loss of TK 10 crore was incurred through purchase of ammunition that was canceled by the chief of the Inspector Ammunition and Explosive. It also found that about TK 9.88 crore has gone down the drain for procurement of tank transporter, which too was earlier cancelled by the inspection office. About TK 2 crore has been wasted by buying adulterated milk powder for the armymen61. As a poor country, the people of the country always fight against poverty. Art 3 of the social charter62 adopted by 12th SAARC Summit states that State parties affirm that highest priority shall be accorded to the alleviation of poverty in all South Asian countries. Recognizing that South Asia's poor could constitute a huge and potential resource, provided their basic needs are met and they are mobilized to create economic growth, stateparties reaffirm that the poor should be empowered and irreversibly linked to the mainstream of development. They also agree to take appropriate measure to create income generation activities for the poor.

Bangladesh needs economic reforms to reduce the poverty, which is a basic problem to development. so, high military expenditure is needless for the country and it should be reduced and the money thus saved spent on various targeted areas such as education, health, income generation initiatives etc.

Infrastructure and connectivity:
Strengthening connectivity of poorer regions and of poor as social groups:
Remoteness from the mainstream of economic and social life is an important aspect of the poverty experience. Redressing such remoteness and strengthening connectivity through roads, railways, waterways, telephone, internet, etc will be a priority63.

Communication:
Bangladesh is crisscrossed by thousand of rivers and their tributaries. So waterways are the main way of communication in Bangladesh. But in many ways it is halted due to siltation and shortage of water. Bangladesh has roads of about two lac forty one thousand Km. It was only four thousand of during the independent in 1971. Bangladesh has also a railway about 2854.96 km. In the economic year 2004-2005, Bangladesh government allocated 3968.41 crore taka for the development of communication64.

Challenges:
Challenge1: lack of bridge and culvert
As Bangladesh is a riverine country, it becomes difficult to by roads.

Challenge2: reduction of navigability of waterways
For various reasons like siltation, withdrawal of water from upper stream etc reduce the navigability of our waterways.

Challenge3: built roads on the basis of economic priority
Roads should be built as on economic priority. Sometimes roads are built for political reasons. This should be avoided.

Challenge4: quality of roads and remove corruption
Because of corruption the quality of roads is not maintained. This should be avoided.

Strategies:

Adoption of a rational investment programme.
Increase the navigability of the waterways.
Built bridge and culvert on the basis of priority.
Institutional reform.
Labour rationalization of the railway.
Remove corruption and ensure quality of roads.

ICT sector:
To a break through the disconcerting episode of poverty in our country, ICT can play a pivotal role. What this sector can provide India can be an example. In India, 'E-Choupal' model was developed to leverage information technology to provide information to farmers on different products and services that they need to enhance farm productivity, get better price realization and reduce transaction costs in input purchases farm productivity, get better price realization and reduce transaction costs in input purchases and product marketing. E-Choupal enables farmers to access current local and global information on weather, scientific farming practices as well as market prices for the inputs and products in the village itself through the web-portal. E-Choupal was first launched in June 2000 in Madhya Pradesh for soybeans. It is functioning in over 4500 village through 770 kiosks in Madhya Pradesh, Karnatka, Andhra Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh. The Choupals in different states cover different products. Aqua Choupal in Andhra Pradesh covers fisheries, plantersnet.com in Karnataka is for coffee and in Ut