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Rural poverty approaches, policies & strategies in Bangladesh

Successive governments in Bangladesh have accorded priority to reducing poverty. This has resulted in a sharp decline in poverty from 56.6% in 1991 to 40% in 2005. However in spite of this, Bangladesh still lags behind in some of the MDG indicators, in particular adult literacy, access to safe drinking water, maternal mortality rate, and primary school completion rate. A new poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) for the period 2009-2011 is focusing on sustaining growth so that Bangladesh continues its good progress in reducing poverty.

The current PRSP, sets out four main courses of action to achieve poverty reduction:

• enhancing pro-poor growth
• boosting critical sectors for pro-poor growth
• devising effective safety nets and targeted programmes
• ensuring human development

Particular attention is being paid to agriculture and the rural non-farm sector as the two main drivers of increased productivity.

Source: IFAD

More information:

• Government's poverty reduction strategy (World Bank, November 2005)
• Country assistance strategy (World Bank, 2006-2009)