Allocate more share of budget for children
Seminar told
Discussants at a seminar yesterday called for allocating more share of the national budget for the areas of children's education, health and nutrition.
Regardless of the national and global economic environment, the government should increase key social sector budgets for education, health and nutrition to reach the goal of becoming a middle income country by 2021, they opined.
The seminar was organised by Unnayan Shamannay and Unicef at a hotel in the capital to launch a report titled "Children and Budget in Bangladesh".
In the recent years, there has been a reduction in the budgetary allocation for children's education, health and nutrition, the paper said.
Although budgetary allocation for education has increased over the years, the share of this budget as a percentage of the total budget has decreased, it said.
Only two percent of the country's GDP is allocated for education, it added.
Similarly, the percentage of health sector budget has decreased form 5.71 in 2008-09 to 4.87 in 2012-13, the report said.
Mahfuz Kabir, senior research fellow at Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, read out the report's key findings.
Dr Pascal Villeneuve, Unicef's representative to Bangladesh, said, "To make the vision of becoming a middle income country a reality, it is important to examine the national budget from a child's perspective."
Rasheda K Chowdhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education and a former adviser to a caretaker government, said rather than focusing on budgetary allocation only, the way the money is spent needs to be monitored.
Mutafa K Mujeri, director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Hossain Zillur Rahman, a former adviser to a caretaker government, and economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud also addressed the seminar.
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