Bangladesh performing well in fulfilling SDGs, but many challenges ahead  

Although Bangladesh is on track and performing well in achieving many of the  UN-adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in time, it still faces the challenges of low external resources and lack of global partnership apart from lower revenue-GDP ratio.

Achieving SDGs will critically depend on the availability of resources including external resources and global partnership, according to an official document collected by UNB.

The United Nations adopted the SDGs in 2015 with a global call of action on 17 integrated goals with a pledge to end poverty, protect the earth's environment and climate and ensure peace and prosperity for people everywhere by 2030.

Bangladesh's performance has so far been commendable in various fields, including poverty reduction, gender equality, child and maternal mortality, nutrition, sanitation, electricity, annual GDP growth and disaster management.

But it has to overcome a number of the hurdles to further improve its performance, the document observes.

"Government revenue as a proportion of GDP needs to be substantially increased through undertaking measures for increasing the number of taxpayers and improving tax collection and management mechanism," it says.

The document calls for a substantial increase in inflow of FDI and remittance for achieving of the the goals.

According to official data, the tax to GDP ratio of the country has been 9.9 per cent on an average since 2015-2019, while it is 19.8 per cent for India, 23.9 per cent for Nepal, 14.7 per cent for Pakistan, 13.5 per cent for Sri Lanka.

The ratio is 25.6 per cent for developing countries and 35.9 per cent for developed countries, according to the data.

The tax-to-GDP ratio is a ratio of a nation's tax revenue relative to its gross domestic product, the value of goods and services produced in a country during a certain period. The ratio is also a marker of how well the government controls a country's economic resources.

The document says that Bangladesh has undertaken a comprehensive strategy and actions to effectively internalise Sustainable Development Goals. The 7th Five Year Plan incorporated 82 per cent of sustainable development targets. As a result, the country is well on track in achieving SDGs.

Out of 17 SDGs, Bangladesh has made considerable progress in reducing poverty. In 2019, the proportion of population living below the international poverty line (absolute poverty measured by USD 1.90 per day) was 10.5 per cent.

The proportion of population living below the national poverty line was 20.5 per cent in 2019. Similarly, progress of expanding coverage of social protection and proportion of government expenditure on services as share of total government expenditure has been remarkable during the last decade.

Progress of reducing stunting, which stood at 28 per cent in 2019, is virtually on track at the current rate of reduction. Similarly, the progress on reducing wasting which stood at 9.8 per cent is also on track.

In the health sector, the document said, the maternal mortality ratio decreased from 81 per 100,000 live births in 2015 to 165 in 2019. The number of births attended by skilled health personnel was 42.1 per cent in 2014, which also increased to 59 per cent in 2019.

The under-five mortality rate has persistently declined from 36 per 1000 live births in 2015 to 28 in 2019, and already achieved the SDG target of 2025.

The official document mentions that in the case of education, the gender parity index (GPI) has remained above 1 for more than a decade in both primary and secondary levels of education, and at tertiary education, the GPI reached to 0.72 in 2016.

The primary school completion rate is the highest (82.6 per cent), which followed by the lower secondary (64.7 per cent) and upper secondary (29.4 per cent) levels.

It mentioned that Bangladesh has achieved gender parity at primary and secondary levels. "Adult literacy has also been increased but at a sluggish pace," it adds.

The document says that Bangladesh has made significant efforts to reduce its disaster vulnerability and is considered today a global leader in coastal resilience due to its significant long term investment in protecting lives.

A total of 4318 per 100,000 persons were affected by disasters and the number of death of was 0.316 per 100,000 persons in 2019, which is a significant improvement over the baseline figure.

The forest coverage of the country now stands at 14.47 per cent. Coverage by protected areas of important sites of mountain biodiversity also reached to 0.35 per cent.