MDG to SDGA Bangladesh success story and

financing challenges

Millennium Development GoalsAt the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history, with all 189 United Nations Member States, including Bangladesh, adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions - income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights - the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.

Sustainable Development GoalsThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which follow and expand on the MDGs, are a new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that UN member states are expected to use to frame their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years up to 2030.

At the Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, the 193 UN member states adopted the 2030 development agenda titled Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030, covering topics on Poverty, Food, Health, Education, Women, Water, Energy, Economy, Infrastructure, Inequality, Habitation, Consumption, Climate, Marinosystems, Ecosystems, Institutions, and Sustainability.

Sustainable Development GoalsThe goals and targets of the SDG will stimulate action over the next 15 years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet.

The five elements of the Sustainable Development Goals are:

People Planet Prosperity Peace Partnership

Bangladesh – A MDG Success StoryBangladesh remains one of the poorest countries in the world with 43% of people living on less than $1.25 per day, according to the World Bank, but it has also become one of the eleven emerging economies of the world.

Bangladesh is one of the forerunners in achieving the first of eight Millennium Development Goals - reducing extreme poverty rates by a half between 1990 and 2015. In fact, Bangladesh received special honors from the UN for halving the number of people in extreme poverty (from 58 percent to 29 percent) more than a couple of years ahead of time.The country with their MDG achievements has become a Development Surprise for the world. The latest MDG scorecard, published September 2015, shows out of the eight goals, Bangladesh has achieved four goals and is in track to achieve the other four goals.

Bangladesh – A MDG Success StoryBangladesh has reversed some of the worst poverty indicators in the world in recent years, managing to reduce maternal mortality by 40% between 2001 and 2010. Girls outnumber boys in school and extreme poverty rates were cut in half between 1990 and 2015. But serious problems remain, including ‘all aspects of the environment’ such as climate change, deforestation, water-logging and an increase in CO2 emissions.Goals Base Year (1990) Current Status Target by 2015

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger(population below national upper povertyLine, percent)

56.6 31.5 (2010) 29.0

Achieving universal primary education(Net enrollment in primary education, percent) 60.5 97.3 (2013) 100

Reducing child (under-5) mortality(per 1000 live births) 146 42 (2012) 48

Improving maternal health(Maternal mortality ratio, per 100,000 live births) 574 194 (2010) 144

Bangladesh and SDGsWith the MDG achievements, Bangladesh has built up a confidence to tackle the challenges of SDGs and achieve most of the goals by 2030, but some goals are so difficult where lot of investments will be required in achieving those targets. For example,

• The end of poverty in all forms and end of hunger will mean to eliminate the poverty in all areas of the country.

• Achievement of gender equality, will mean major changes in the law of inheritance, besides eliminating all harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage etc.

• To ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all will surely need heavy investment with infrastructure build up and technological innovations.

• To promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive intuitions at all levels, there must be efforts and visible indications to significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen goods and combat all forms of organized crime.

• Climate and environment actions will need extensive help from the international arena to build up better policies and raise public awareness.

Financing the SDGs

Achieving the SDGs in all countries will require additional global investment in the range of US$5 trillion to US$7 trillion per year up to 2030.

Developing countries will need between US$3.3 trillion and US$4.5 trillion a year to finance basic infrastructures, food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and health and education, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. But at the current level of public and private investment, there will be an annual financing gap of US$2.5 trillion, or 3.2 percent of world GDP.

Financing the SDGsFinancing will be a major challenge for Bangladesh to attain the Sustainable Development Goals as it already faces deficiency in its spending on social security, education and healthcare, and experience further slowdown of FDI and ODA as the country has already graduated to the status of Lower Middle Income one.

In the public sector finance of the country, domestic resource mobilization is 12.1 per cent of the GDP, illicit financial flow 1.2 per cent, foreign aid 1.6 per cent and public investment 6.9 per cent. Private sector investment has been stagnant at 22.1 per cent for the last three years, foreign direct investment only 0.9 per cent, which is comparatively low, and remittances 7.9 per cent remains a volatile prospect.

Financing the SDGsTo achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, some suggested avenues are raising revenue collection, utilizing foreign assistance, keeping pace in remittance earnings, and raising investment for employment generation to implement the goals. To overcome the reducing ODA constraints the need for creating environment for more private-sector investment has become critical. Additional flow of financing must come mostly from domestic sources to mobilize the needed finance for SDGs implementation.

Bangladesh has to raise the domestic resource mobilization up to 18 per cent of gross domestic product from the current 12.1 per cent through increasing revenue collection along with preventing illicit financial flow from the country, which is estimated at 1.2 per cent of GDP a year. The level of private investment which remained almost stagnant over the last few years at around 22 per cent of GDP should also be increased to 29 per cent.

Increasing foreign direct investment up to three per cent to four per cent of GDP from the existing 0.9 per cent, proper and efficient use of foreign loans and aid, will be helpful in achieving the goals. Bangladesh also should get at least 2.5 per cent of its GDP yearly as foreign aid, which is now stuck at only 1.6 per cent.

Domestic resource mobilization and futureAs opposed to an unsustainable development path through reliance on resource from external sources, domestic resource mobilization can lead towards a self-sustaining development for the country. Establishing a sound and transparent taxation system, developing a functioning financial system, a developed capital market, public private partnership can be some modes of generating the flow of domestic resources.

Domestic resource mobilization effort in Bangladesh is constrained by low level of public expenditure and investment, among many other factors. Thus the country is posed with dual challenges of generating domestic resources and utilizing that resource efficiently for increased productivity and economic development. Thus while addressing the issue of domestic resource mobilization both policy and institutional aspects have to be considered.

Bangladesh with its aim to become a Middle-income nation by 2021 and to get the status of a Developed country by 2041, has to work hard towards achieving its Sustainable Development Goals cascading it into every policy, guidelines, financial and institutional structures. The earnest desire and action of the government, combined with the support from the international arena, as well as the domestic financing and private sector market can only pave the way for a bright and sustainable future for the country.

Resources• http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/19/sustainable-

development-goals-united-nations

• Millennium Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report (September 2015), General Economics Division (GED), Bangladesh Planning Commission

• Report on the post-2015 development agenda for Bangladesh (May 2013), United Nations in Bangladesh

• Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges for Bangladesh, Dhiraj Kumar Nath (September, 2015), Editorial, The Daily Sun

• http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/• http://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/dhaka-ready-face-new-challenges-1

43818

• http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/25/sheikh-hasina-i-want-to-make-bangladesh-poverty-free-sustainable-development-goals

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals • http://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/exhibition/2015/Presentations/Banglad

esh.pdf

• http://www.bd.undp.org/content/bangladesh/en/home/post-2015/sdg-overview.html

• http://cpd.org.bd/index.php/press-reports-cpd-dialogue-national-level-implementation-challenges-2030-agenda/

• http://post2015.org/2014/12/10/implementing-post-2015-agenda-in-bangladesh-through-domestic-resource-mobilisation/