Reducing inequalities, additional financing especially from external sources, attaining gender equality, creating decent jobs are the key areas where the country needs more attention, said the report titled ‘SDG Bangladesh Progress Report 2018’.

GED unveiled the report containing the evaluation of two-year performance at a programme held at the NEC conference room in Dhaka on Sunday.
According to the report, the government has been following a pro-poor development strategy, which combines acceleration of economic growth and reduction of poverty and inequality.

‘While the policies have been largely effective in enhancing growth and reducing poverty, they have not succeeded in reversing the worsening income distribution,’ it said.
Income inequality has increased while consumption inequality has remained relatively stable, the report said, referring to the findings of the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey-2016.

The report said that achieving SDGs would critically depend on the availability of resources including external resources.
Data scarcity and additional financing both from domestic and external sources will be the major challenges in attaining SDGs adopted by UN in 2015.

Bangladesh has made good progress in many targets relating to the first three goals — ending poverty, ending hunger, and healthy lives and well-being — as the country has already acheived four targets while six others are on track, the report said.

The progress on reducing extreme poverty measured by $1.90 a day or national poverty line, expanding coverage of social protection and proportion of government expenditure on health, education and social protection as share of total government expenditure is on track.

The progress on reducing incidence of poverty (upper poverty line) does not seem to be on track, the report said.
Under-five mortality rate and neonatal mortality rate under healthy lives and well-being have already surpassed or reached their 2020 targets.

The country has more to do in eliminating gender disparity at the tertiary education level, attaining gender equality and for women empowerment under inclusive and equitable quality education, and gender equality and women empowerment goals.

The country is on track in terms of achieving the SDG on clean water and sanitation while moving steadfastly towards ensuring access of 100 per cent households to electricity well ahead of the target time in 2025 as it reached 91 per cent in December, 2018.

But the country lags behind in its use of renewable energy.
At the programme, prime minister’s economic affairs adviser Mashiur Rahman emphasised the need for capacity building for utilising huge foreign loans and grants remained stuck in the pipeline.

Planning minister MA Mannan said the country would have to go long way to achieve the SDGs though it had been doing well in attaining many targets.
Economist Wahiduddin Mahmud said that the tax-GDP ratio was still not satisfactory as the country lagged behind in internal resource mobilisation.

There is a need for more spending in health and education while increasing spending on the social sector is also a challenge, he said.

UN resident coordinator Mia Seppo said that Bangladesh needed to address the issues of rising inequality and concentration of wealth, creating jobs and enhancing skills of labour force and gender inequality, which would be the challenges for the government in attaining the SDGs.
Prime minister’s principal secretary Md Nojibur Rahman also spoke at the programme, among others. GED member Shamsul Alam presided over the event.