Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship

Research IdeasDhaka

May 28, 2015

Bangladesh PrioritiesWORKING WITH 30-50 economists including Nobel Laureates, 100+ sector experts engaging major development organizations, NGOs, government, businesses, youths, rural and urban Bangladeshis to identify, analyze and prioritize interventions that will deliver greater benefit per taka spent, helping move Bangladesh towards Vision 2021 and a more prosperous long term future.

In cooperation with the Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC,

Copenhagen Consensus Center organized roundtable discussions with

an aim to figure out smarter solutions to the most problematic issues facing

Bangladesh.

These roundtables are one of several sources

for research ideas.

Sourcing ideas and solutions

Smarter solutions for Bangladesh

Complete set of papers on 30-50 solutions

PRIORITIZATION

Government NGOs

Academia Pvt sector

Think tanks Developmentorganizations

Eminent Panel Assessment

Government and donor seminars

Rural polls Newspaper pollsamong readers

Youth forums across the

countryPrivate sector

meetings

Social, economic and environmental benefit-cost

research by top Bangladeshi, and

international economistsExtensive peer review by

sector experts and academics

100+ ideas on policies & investments

2016

2015

Continuous engagement

with the public via electronic,

print and social media

Working with civil society, government and sector

experts

Widely advocating results of

prioritization exercises

OUTREACH

Research Ideas

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship;(1 of 12)

• Continue emphasis on worker service exports. • Expand micro-credit particularly for women

entrepreneurs. • Strengthen land administration to protect poor farmers

from predatory land grabbers. • Increase public spending for rural electrification and

irrigation. • Life cycle based disease prevention and curative

healthcare services.• Extend National Social Security Strategy (NSSS)

especially targeting women.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship;(2 of 12)

• Improve working conditions to attract more women to the civil service.

• Create a business challenge fund for rural entrepreneurs.

• Safe and affordable transport system to increase women’s mobility.

• Run more buses with reserved seats for women or women only buses.

• Operate women only buses. • Increase bus services for girls' schools and colleges in

all cities.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (3 of 12)

• Implement monitoring mechanisms to measure impact of public policies and programs, particularly from the gender equality perspective.

• Undertake massive awareness raising to stop all kinds of discrimination against dalits and excluded communities.

• Prioritize young, domestic entrepreneurs in acquiring government tenders of logistic supports of development projects.

• Allocate free access to utility services for Dalits.• Integrate sexual minority groups in the national social

protection mechanisms.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (4 of 12)

• Strengthen coordination mechanisms and management capacity to ensure an effective multi-sector HIV/AIDS response.

• Provide every disabled child with a Child Disability Benefit. • Relocate children with disabilities from the street.• Expand education program for hearing and visually

impaired children.• Provide a monthly grant of Taka 800 for children (up to

age 4) of poor, vulnerable families.• Provide a monthly school stipend of Taka 240 for all

primary and secondary school going children belonging to the poor and vulnerable households.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (5 of 12)• Provide a monthly disability benefit of Taka 800 to

children suffering from disability.• Provide a monthly disability benefit of Taka 800 for

working age population suffering from disability.• Consolidate all cash-based and food-based schemes

within the Employment Generation Program for the Poor (EGPP) by 2018.

• Provide financial support to vulnerable women - widows, divorced, destitute, single mother, and unemployed single women.

• Expand Maternal Health Voucher Scheme (MHVS). • Set up a comprehensive pension system.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (6 of 12)• Index all cash transfers to inflation rate. • Create a Single Registry Management Information

System to identify the extreme poor for better targeting of public provisions.

• Strengthen government to citizen (G2C) safety net payment through mobile banking.

• Develop a nationwide complaints and grievance mechanism.

• Government’s VGF/VGD programs to emulate BRAC's ultra-poor graduation program.

• Free distribution of water and healthcare. • Distribute khas lands to the homeless and landless.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (7 of 12)• Invest in building more rural roads to generate

employment e.g. transport worker.• Training women in livestock, poultry and good

agricultural practices.• Enhance access to health facilities through community

clinic. • Setting a price for milk producers at the national level. • Provide safe drinking water in urban slums. • Develop a solar water pasteurizer system for purification

of at least 10 liters of water.• Implement Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100.• Increase social safety net system (direct cash transfers).

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (8 of 12)• Promote livestock farming for the landless. • Leverage public private partnerships (PPP) to use

government’s resources for SSNs.• Provide budgetary support to write-off bad micro-credit

debts. • Offer employment opportunities to secondary school

students.• Reduce barriers for setting up RMG factories in new

areas of Bangladesh.• Provide support to micro, small and medium enterprises

(MSMEs), particularly those engaged in fashion and electronics.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (9 of 12)• Implementation of different plans, projects and

initiatives under the annual development plan (ADP).• Establishment of community led housing for the urban

poor.• Scale up Community Development Committees (CDCs)

savings scheme for the urban poor.• Replicate and modify, where needed, TUP BRAC’s

Targeting the Ultra-Poor (TUP) Program. • Replicate and modify, where needed, REOPA Rural

Employment Generation for Public Assets (REOPA). • Replicate and modify, where needed, UPPR Urban

Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR).

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (10 of 12)• Replicate and modify, where needed, EEE-SHIREE

[Economic Empowerment of the Poorest/Stimulation Household Improvement Resulting in Economic Empowerment].

• Extent Char Livelihoods Program (CLP) focus on extreme vulnerability to flooding.

• Monitor factory compliance on work-conditions and labor standards within and beyond RMG exports.

• Development of rural non-rice and non-farm marketing linkages with upstream urban markets.

• Reduce leakages through online transfer of social safety net payments.

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (11 of 12)• Earmarking 1.2% of GDP every year to realize the goal

of “Zero Extreme Poverty by 2021”.• Integrate high quality BCC with cash transfers [delivers

large improvements in both inputs into pre-school child nutrition and anthropometric outcomes].

• Provide every extreme poor household with a bank account.

• Implement Comprehensive Trade Policy for better linkages between import and export policies.

• Expediting work on Enhanced Integrated Framework for increased Aid for Trade (AfT) support.

• Diversify export basket through introducing new products

Poverty, Growth, and Entrepreneurship; (12 of 12)• Widen range of destination markets for exports.• Setting up a “Global Technology Acquisition fund” to

enable Bangladesh industries to acquire very high technology knowledge base.

• Design and implement a cluster based SME Development program.

• Explore potential for exports particularly in IT, education and tourism.

Full List of Attendees and IntervieweesDr. Mahabub Hossain, Head of Research, RED BRAC.Abdul Bayes, Professor, Jahangir Nagar University.Dr. Ferdous Jahan, Professor, Dhaka University.Dr. Bazlul H. Khandaker, Professor, Dhaka University.Erin Nickerson, Economist, USAID.Dr. Hamidul Huq, Professor, ULAB.Ahmed Ishtiaque, Assistant Professor, ULAB.Rezwan Hussain , Assistant Professor, ULAB.Md. Mahbubal Kabir, Senior Research Fellow, RED BRAC.Moklesure Rahman, Team leader, BRAC.Ipshita Habib, Manager, BRAC.Niaz Patwary, Assistant Professor, ULAB.