The New Nation

Dhaka

April 17, 2005

WB, IMF laud progress of Bangladesh
By UNB, Dhaka
Apr 13, 2005

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have praised Bangladesh for its progress in achieving many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) despite adversities.

"Bangladesh has shown remarkable progress with many of the MDGs…," said a report by the donor and lending agencies released on Wednesday.

The report appreciated that the country has made the progress despite its low income level and high incidence of poverty (second only to Afghanistan in the region), adverse initial conditions, high population density, contentious politics and vulnerability to natural disasters.

It said: "Bangladesh's success has owed much to an effective scaling up of basic services built in large part on a combination of effective partnerships between the public sector and NGOs and the resulting high degree of community involvement, local innovation and experimentation."

The 2005 Global Monitoring Report is part of a five-year stocktaking effort to monitor progress towards achieving the MDGs by 2015. More than 180 world leaders agreed unanimously to the development goals at the UN Millennial Summit in New York in September 2000.

The report will be discussed by finance ministers, central bankers, and development ministers in Washington at the spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF.

It will also serve as input for the upcoming G8 heads of state meeting to be held in the UK in July and the UN Summit on the MDGs in September this year.

With just a decade left to go, the new report said, progress towards the MDGs has been slower and more uneven across regions than originally envisaged, with Sub-Saharan Africa falling far short.

Calling for stepped-up action, it pointed to opportunities created by recently improved economic performance in many developing countries.

"Bold and urgent action is needed to reduce extreme poverty and improve people's economic and social prospects in developing countries in keeping with a set of key development targets, called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," said the report.

It outlined a five-point design to accelerate progress and urged to ensure that development efforts are country-owned, scaling up development impact through country-owned and led poverty reduction strategies.

The report stressed the need for improving the environment for private sector-led economic growth by strengthening fiscal management and governance, easing the business environment and investing in infrastructure.

Other points to accelerate progress are scaling up delivery of basic human services, dismantling barriers to trade and doubling development aid in the next five years.

Besides, the report called for improving the quality of aid with faster progress on aid coordination and harmonization.

It said that meeting the MDGs would require a doubling of the amount of official development assistance (ODA) reaching the poorest countries.

World Bank president James Wolfensohn, introducing the second annual global monitoring report, urged donors to use this year of stocktaking to raise their commitments and signal that support for the MDGs is forthcoming.

With per capita income in the order of US$460, the eight countries of South Asia, including Bangladesh, are home to nearly 40 percent of the world's poor living on less than a dollar a day.

Since 1990, the region has experienced rapid GDP growth, averaging close to 5.5 percent a year.