1 INTRODUCTION
1. Bangladesh has had a long relationship with the
UK and is the fourth highest recipient of UK bilateral assistance.
DFID's programme there in the current financial year is £125
million and will rise to £150 million in 2010-11, making
the UK the largest bilateral donor.[1]
There are also approximately 500,000 people of Bangladeshi origin
living in the UK.[2] The
community here makes a significant contribution to Bangladesh
through its remittances which amount to approximately US$900 million
per year.[3]
2. We decided to undertake an inquiry into DFID's
programme in Bangladesh in July 2009. We had heard about elements
of DFID's programme there in the course of other inquiries and
wanted to see for ourselves what progress the country was making
towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and
particularly towards the overall goal of poverty reduction. Bangladesh,
with 159 million people, has the seventh largest population in
the world.[4] Although
it has made steady progress in reducing poverty levels from around
90% after independence in 1971, about 40% of the population still
live on less than $1 dollar a day.[5]
Of these, approximately 35 million are considered extremely poor
and DFID estimates that 15 million people live on the equivalent
of 20 pence a day.[6]
DFID's Country Plan
3. DFID launched its new Country Plan for Bangladesh
in July 2009. This includes "a sharper focus on improving
governance, improving basic social services, supporting private
sector growth, and helping climate change adaptation." Improving
the status of women and girls will remain a key theme.[7]
DFID Bangladesh says that it has reduced the number of its discrete
programmes from about 45 to 25 in order to have a bigger impact
in its specific focus areas, whilst also "maintaining some
breadth".[8] DFID
also increasingly designs and implements programmes with other
donors, through pooled funds and challenge funds managed by third
parties. This reflects the increased focus on working with multilateral
partners set out in DFID's 2009 White Paper, as well as the strong
NGO sector in Bangladesh. (See chapter 3).
4. Bangladesh has been able to maintain relative
economic stability and continuous growth rates and to reduce poverty
despite persistently weak governance and a poor democratic record.
Bangladesh is considered to be a "fragile country" which
has only recently emerged from a three year period of a military-backed
caretaker government.[9]
Society is still highly polarised along political lines and this
disadvantages large sections of the population. The widespread
incidence of poverty in the country contrasts with the significant
gains which have been made in increased access to education and
primary health care services as well as continuous growth in particular
economic sectors, for example the export garment industry. Such
achievements mask the fact that millions of people have failed
to benefit from economic growth. DFID faces the challenge of trying
to reach these sectors of the population and help to lift them
out of poverty.
The inquiry
5. We announced our inquiry into DFID's programme
in Bangladesh in July 2009. We received written evidence from
17 individuals and organisations in the UK and in Bangladesh including
non-governmental organisations, academics, the private sector,
members of the Bangladeshi community in the UK and the UK Government.
We held three oral evidence sessions in Parliament between October
and December. We are grateful to all those who contributed to
our inquiry.
6. There is a large Bangladeshi population in the
UK and we felt it was important to ensure they had an opportunity
to contribute to our inquiry. We held two public meetings in Birmingham
and Poplar to hear their views. We are particularly grateful to
those who made the effort to attend our meetings. We value this
input and hope to continue to engage with the UK public where
appropriate in future inquiries.
OUR VISIT TO BANGLADESH
7. We visited Bangladesh in early November 2009 to
observe DFID's new Country Plan in practice. We spent time in
Dhaka and in Sirajganj. The DFID Bangladesh team was able to show
us a wide cross section of their work there on extreme poverty
reduction, education, private sector development, sanitation and
water and disaster risk reduction. We met the Prime Minister,
the Ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs, parliamentarians
from the two main political parties, NGO representatives from
large and smaller organisations, private sector groups, other
donors including the World Bank, UN Development Programme and
the Asian Development Bank, and a variety of local people who
were benefiting from DFID's programme. The full programme of our
visit and the people we met in Dhaka and Sirajganj can be found
in the Annex to this report. We would like to thank the staff
of DFID Bangladesh for ensuring that we met with such a wide range
of stakeholders. We are also grateful to all those individuals
and organisations in Bangladesh who took the time to talk with
us or show us their projects. We had an interesting and worthwhile
visit which has greatly helped to inform our report.
The structure of this report
8. Efforts towards poverty reduction are hindered
by poor governance and accountability. Chapter 2 examines this
development context and the support measures which DFID and other
donors employ to help improve it. Chapter 3 provides an analysis
of the progress Bangladesh is making towards the achievement of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the contribution which
NGOs make to this. Bangladesh has a unique and large non-governmental
sector which has been remarkably successful in targeting extreme
poverty and helping to deliver basic services to the poor. The
potential conflict between supporting these NGOs and building
government capacity is also explored in this chapter. Progress
towards the gender-related MDGs is mixed. While women form an
increasing proportion of the labour market, the target for reducing
maternal mortality is off-track and the position of women in Bangladeshi
society remains poor. This is the subject of chapter 4. Bangladesh
has been the subject of much media attention as a result of its
vulnerability to climate change. Chapter 5 looks at how donors
can help Bangladesh and its regional neighbours respond to climate
change impacts. Chapter 6 focuses on the future prospects and
challenges for Bangladesh as it seeks to become a middle-income
country. It also looks at the role of the Bangladeshi diaspora
in this journey.
1 Q 139 Back
2
Ev 73 Back
3
High Commission for the People's Republic of Bangladesh, Remittance
inflows to Bangladesh from the UK, London, www.bhclondon.org.uk Back
4
World Bank, World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic
Geography, The World Bank, Washington DC Back
5
UNDP, Human Development Report, 2007-08 Back
6
Q 101, Ev 66. DFID uses the figure of 15 million to refer to the
extreme poor. It should be noted that different organisations
use different measures of extreme poverty. See, Shiree, Extreme
Poverty Policies of donors in Bangladesh: an overview, Bangladesh,
June 2009 Back
7
Ev 70 Back
8
Q 147 Back
9
DFID, Bangladesh: Country Governance Analysis, 2008 Back
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