The country's economy has normalized from the beginning of 2022 although the poverty rate in the country got doubled from April to June 2020 following the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In continuation of the trend of recovery, the poverty rate in the country has now come down at 18.7 percent.
Director General of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) DrBinayek Sen informed this while presiding over the inaugural session of the two-day "BIDS Research Almanac 2023" held at a city hotel.
Planning Minister MA Mannan spoke at the programme as the chief guest while State Minister for Planning DrShamsulAlam spoke as special guest. Planning Division Secretary SatyajitKarmakar spoke as the guest of honour.
Criticizing the data of a research organization that the poverty rate in the country shoot up to 42 percent during the pandemic, DrBinayek said, "There were debates over the data of the poverty rate during the pandemic. Based on the facts of 2020, some of our like-minded research firms said that the poverty rate was doubled during that time of pandemic. Actually, they had committed errors while accomplishing their tasks in a hurry."
Private think tank SANEM published research findings in January 2021 after conducting the survey among some 5,577 families under 64 districts in 8 divisions during the period of November and December in 2020 where they showed that the poverty rate in the country climbed up to 42 percent. The media also provided a massive coverage of the findings of that survey, he added.
Regarding that survey, the BIDS Director General said, "The fact of the matter was although poverty rate increased during that time, but that was for a temporary period which was from April to June, 2020. After June, the poverty rate started to come down again."
He said after overcoming the shocks of various variants of the COVID-19, the economy again started to come to its normal pace from the beginning of 2022. "But, that doesn't mean that people gave their labour here and there, rather the non-farm self employment of the country's people played a big role."
Highlighting the findings of the survey, the renowned economist said that both the public and the private sector played a strong role during that time through necessary financing to create sufficient employments in the country where information technology and agriculture extension technology played their due part.
He said the survey indicates that the economy of the country came to normalcy from the beginning of 2022.
The renowned economist said in between 2019 and 2022, the overall poverty rate came down by 4.3 percent while extreme poverty rate by 3.2 percent. "This is a significant progress in reducing poverty through braving the shocks of the pandemic," he added.
According to the latest data of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the overall poverty rate in the country is 18.7 percent of which half have been emerged as new poor.
Suggesting the government to take necessary steps to alleviate these new poor above the poverty line, he said that the government should also take special measures to return the drop out students in the schools.
Side by side, DrBinayek stressed on proper utilization of the social safety net programmes alongside taking those measures which would help to reduce poverty in the country.
Speaking on the occasion as the chief guest, Planning Minister MA Mannan said that although many organizations delivered various types of data during the pandemic, but the latest findings of the BBS on poverty rate showed that the government is in the right direction.
Mentioning that inequality is the initial problem of every developing country, he said that there is a need to reduce disparity through creating new resources and ensuring proper distribution of those resources in a just way in the social safety net initiatives.
State Minister for Planning DrShamsulAlam said that when the country was heading towards higher growth, the pandemic and the onslaught of Russia-Ukraine war came all on a sudden hampering the momentum to some extent.
DrAlam also emphasized on proper implementation of the poverty alleviation related projects alongside conducting a mid-term review of the Eight Five Year Plan and thus taking necessary steps in this regard.