Sixth Plan eyes Bangladesh a middle-income country by 2021

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Finance

Friday, 03 September 2010

Author / Source : JAGARAN CHAKMA

The sixth five year plan is going to set a total of 16 core targets for economic growth, employment, poverty reduction, human resources development, gender balance and environmental protection. If the targets are achieved, the socio- economic environment of the country will transform it from a low-income economy to the first stages of middle- income country.
Along with higher per capita income, the Vision 2021 projects a development scenario, where citizens will have a higher standard of living, better education, having social justice with more equitable socio-economic environment and the sustainability of development will be ensured through better protection from climate change and natural disasters, the draft said. Explaining the strategy of the plan, it said that an essential pre-requisite for rapid reduction of poverty was to attain a high economic growth, ensuring sustainable productive employment and incomes for a large number of people in Bangladesh.
The growth-employment-poverty reduction linkage will be ensured by focusing on labour intensive urban and rural manufacturing production, based on domestic and export markets and organised services, the draft added.
The productivity will be improved through adaptation of new technology based on strategic partnership with foreign investment and implantation of better Information and Communication Technology, the draft plan  visualises.
The access of the poor to essential services like health, education, nutrition water supply and sanitation will be substantially expanded along with effort to increase access to key production inputs like irrigated water,
fertilizer, electricity, rural roads and institutional finance.
The sixth plan will support equal opportunities for women in all section of the society with an objective of integrating them  better into the  social and economic sphere.
The governance improvement strategy will focus on ensuring the equality of opportunity, personal freedom and dignity, ensuring the role of law, improving delivery of basic services, capacity building in key public entities, and adoption of electronic governance.
To achieve 8 per cent growth by 2015 the government will emphasise on manufacturing and organised services. Increasing the growth rate to 8 per cent by the end of plan period will require the investment rate to increase from 24 per cent of GDP of 32 per cent.
It said that much of the higher investment would be deployed to reduce the infrastructure constraint and human development.
It will promote diversification in agriculture by emphasising incentives, research and extension, rural infrastructure and rural finance and it will focus on promoting rural and urban manufacturing production based on domestic and export markets.
The plan will focus on removing the constraints through massive investment in power and transports through better efficiency and demand management and through energy trade with neighbours.
To achieve the objective of a rapid increase in tax revenue and reduce dependence on trade taxes it envisages fundamental reforms in the tax laws and modernization of tax administration.
The plan will emphasise on equity, better service delivery through improvement in governance and management, improving education financing. including a significant increase in public funding as a share of GDP and promoting public-private partnership in education.
About the population, health and nutrition, the plan provides importance to equity and gender balance in the distribution of health care services, strengthening private sector role and ensuring accountability as well as strengthening partnerships with NGOs.
To mitigate the adverse consequences of climate change, the plan will explore collaboration with the international community.
The sixth five year plan will seek to address the income inequity, high income jobs, improving farm productivity and incomes to reduce poverty and safety net. The strategy will be to design and implement a range of social protection programmes that meets the needs of this under-privileged group.
Priority will be given to the implementation of e-governance through the Digital Bangladesh initiative to provide better and speedier service and to improve the transparency and accountability of public service agencies.
Besides, attention will be focused on developing and strengthening a number of core public institutions, including the central bank, the Ministry of Finance, the Tax Department, the Planning Commission, Audit and Accounts, the parliamentary sub-committees, land administration and the public utilities.