Bangladesh News

While the coverage of government safety net programmes has been inadequate to meet the needs of the poor, the net benefits of the programmes are also shrinking day by day due to price spiral of essentials, says a draft survey report of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

Suggesting periodic review and adjustment of allocations for social safety net programmes (SSNP), the draft report strongly recommends increasing allowances for the old, widowed and distressed women, and the disabled.

“Taken all system costs on recipients’ accounts and ever increasing price hikes of essentials into consideration, the net benefit of the present meagre rates of some schemes have already reduced to a great extent..,” reads the draft report titled ‘Survey on Social Safety-Nets Programs in Bangladesh’.

The BBS study was conducted in 2007 with financial assistance from the World Bank, which surveyed 2,741 households, of which 2,040 were beneficiaries and 701 were non-beneficiaries in 69 upazilas of 12 districts.

Beneficiaries of 12 of the 35 safety net programmes, run by the government in collaboration with donors and NGOs, were surveyed.

About 2 to 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is usually allocated for SSNPs.

While the largest programmes are food-based, programmes based on conditional cash transfer are becoming increasingly important, while it has become imperative to improve children’s access to schooling, particularly for girl children, the draft report says.

“But fiscal constraints inhibit the SSNP coverage [from reaching] its desired level,” adds the report.

Citing a recent World Bank simulation, the report also says eradicating poverty would require 35% of the government expenditures while it is only 5% at the moment covering hardly 10% of the poor.

“This demands both lateral expansion and improved operational efficiency of the SSNP,” the report suggests.

Although the average gross amount received by the surveyed beneficiaries was Tk 576, the net benefit stood at Tk 510 after deductions of associated costs and system payments, according to the report.

The deductions were relatively higher for the beneficiaries of Food for Work Programme under Rural Infrastructure Development Project, and for the beneficiaries of primary education stipends.

While 61 percent of the beneficiaries had to travel less than an hour to reach SSNP benefit delivery venues, 42 percent reported wastage of an hour or less in waiting at the delivery points, and 37 percent said the waiting time for them was 2 to 3 hours.

The cost of travelling to delivery points was Tk 25 or less for about half of the beneficiaries, and for 24 percent it was Tk 51 to Tk 75. About 12 percent of the beneficiaries incur a travel cost of Tk 76 to Tk 100 to receive the benefits from designated delivery points.

Although 63 percent of the surveyed beneficiaries said their selections for SSNP was fair and based on pre-defined criteria, 35 percent said they had to approach union parishad or NGO bosses for their selections.

Instances of bribery was reported by 2% of the beneficiaries and lobbying through friends and relatives was reported by 4%, which indicate some degrees of irregularities in the selection processes, the report says.

About 55 percent of the beneficiaries reported that the benefits they received met their 81 percent to 100 percent food requirements in the previous month, while about 11 percent said they met their 61 to 80 percent food requirements with what they received from SSNP.

Respondents in some areas said they received their quarterly instalments of benefits after six months or even later.

Due to procedural bottlenecks in getting beneficiary cards, sometimes the beneficiaries have to abstain from work for three days, facing consequential loss of income.

Pointing out insensitivity to regional specificities and seasonal adversities like monga and river erosion in the programmes, the report suggests expanding the duration of vulnerable group feeding (VGF) schemes in monga prone areas of northern Bangladesh from three months to five months.

While the amount of VGF support needs to be increased in river-basin areas, especially during monsoons, food for work scheme can be considered as a viable option during other months, the report adds.

On steps to check quantity leakage and maintaining qualities of in-kind deliverables, the report quotes surveyed people as suggesting pre-weighed, packed food grains in airtight plastic sacks.

On the inadequacy of SSNP coverage, the report says the surveyed people argued for lateral expansion to cover more of the poor throughout the country.

In the budget for 2008-’09 fiscal, Tk 16,932 crore or 2.8 percent of GDP has been allocated for SSNPs while it was 11,467 crore or 2.1 percent of GDP in the last fiscal’s revised budget.