Increased allocation for safety nets

The need for increased budgetary allocation for social safety network programmes (SSNPs) was felt intensely during the Covid-19 pandemic period. While the pandemic is not officially over, it appears to be in its last stages. However, it has left behind ghastly scars. Before the pandemic, around one-fourth of the people in Bangladesh were poor. According to relevant studies after more than two years of the deadly pandemic, one-third of Bangladeshis are now poor. In a country of around 170 million people, over 56 million people are poverty-stricken–an alarming development indeed. Special programmes for poverty alleviation are essential. Containing poverty is inevitable because if it is left unchecked, it might gradually take the relatively well-off sections into its fold. Poverty and prosperity can’t go together.

Economists have advised the government about the increased allocation for social safety networks in the upcoming budget. In fact, in the last fiscal year, Bangladesh expanded funding for social safety net programmes by a hefty 12.5 percent. Yesterday, a report published in this newspaper said that Tk 5,386 crore will be raised from last year’s allocation. Hopefully, this will create jobs and provide financial support to the poor, low-income, and vulnerable groups. The report cited Finance Ministry sources saying that for FY2022-23, the government plans to set aside Tk 1,13,000 crore for social protection, which will be 16.70 per cent of the next budget and 2.60 per cent of the GDP. It should be noted that this figure is still low compared to even countries in the region. In South Asian countries, the average allocation for SNPs is about 4 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP). The East Asian and Pacific countries spend about 8 per cent of their GDP on SNPs, while the European countries allocate about 20 per cent of their GDP on social protection. Bangladesh is making progress regarding the matter, but the progress is relatively slow.

Social safety nets for citizens in most developed countries are quite strong. A few are all-encompassing, and some Scandinavian countries have what is known as ‘womb to tomb’ care for their citizenry.

For obvious reasons, Bangladesh lags in allotting more money for these programmes in its budget. In Bangladesh, there are significant challenges in implementing such programmes that include setting the eligibility criteria in practice, scarcity of resources, demand-supply gap, elite involvement at the local level, and unresponsiveness to changes in people’s needs. However, the single most significant factor, corruption, has surpassed all these challenges. In countries like Bangladesh, an economically weaker segment is always vulnerable to the poverty trap. So the introduction of Social Safety Nets (SSNs) as an interim measure can help break the vicious cycle of poverty. As stated earlier, the allocation of public expenditure on SSNPs has steadily increased over recent years, mainly since the pandemic spread its vicious tentacles in Bangladesh. However, as the report says, prominent economists have reservations about how money is being spent on these programmes. They say that social safety net expenditures are full of deceptions, including mismatched total allocation numbers and the authorities’ failure to give the beneficiaries what they are supposed to get and even to identify the real beneficiaries. If these concerns are not addressed promptly, increased budgetary allocations will not bring many benefits to the poor and vulnerable people.

SNPs are necessary to alleviate poverty in an economy that takes a long time to bring benefits to the poor and disadvantaged. In Bangladesh, the failure to support large numbers of poor and vulnerable people–especially in these critical times– is leaving them exposed to risks and unexpected difficulties like unemployment, ill-health, and natural disasters. Many people are still not getting the benefits of the SSN programmes due to the presence of targeting errors, corruption, weak monitoring, and faulty selection criteria. The extremely poor are yet to get the optimal benefits from the programmes.