Bangladesh’s extreme poverty reduced to 12.9 percent: World Bank

"Bangladesh has done an impressive job in reducing poverty over the last decades and has the potential to end extreme poverty by 2030 if it takes firm steps to make growth more inclusive to benefit all Bangladeshis," the Washington based multilateral lending agency said in its "Bangladesh Development Update", released at a press conference here today.

Bangladesh's extreme poverty rate dropped to 12.9 percent of the total population in 2015-16 and it came down from 13.8 percent in the previous 2014-15, Lead Economist of WB Dhaka office Zahid Hussain said while highlighting the key features of the report.

He said the WB has calculated the rate of extreme poverty based on Bangladesh's 7.1 percent GDP growth in FY 2016.

"Bangladesh's achievement is better than India, Pakistan and Bhutan," he added.

Under the new $1.90 poverty line based on 2011 purchasing power, 28 million, or 18.5 percent of Bangladeshis lived in extreme poverty in 2010. More than 16 million people in Bangladesh graduated from extreme poverty between 2000 and 2010, it said.

"Achieving the goal of reducing extreme poverty to less than 3 percent of Bangladeshis by 2030 will require economic growth becoming more inclusive with the poorest 40 percent of society receiving greater benefits from development," said the WB.

Two new reports, the Bangladesh Development Update and Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016: Taking on Inequality, find that Bangladesh is making sustained progress in poverty reduction and increasing opportunities.

"The fruit of Bangladesh's development experience in innovations such as conditional cash transfers, gender equity in education, and successful family planning is being reflected in its notable reduction of poverty and improvement in the lives of its citizens," said Qimiao Fan, the World Bank's Country Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. "As a steadfast partner with Bangladesh since 1972, we are committed to supporting the country in increasing shared prosperity to overcome extreme poverty and other development challenges within a generation," said Qimiao Fan.

To move to the next level and realize its goals of becoming a middle income country by 2021 and overcoming extreme poverty by 2030, the country needs to sustain its economic and remittances growth, create more and better jobs, focus on energy and transportation infrastructure, and make progress on improving the quality of health and education.

"Bangladesh needs to continue creating enough jobs to employ the 2 million young people who enter the job market every year. This requires boosting productivity and foreign and domestic investment by reforming business regulations, reducing infrastructure and energy deficiencies, while enhancing financial efficiency," said Zahid Hussain.

"The country could also increase its resources to make much-needed investments and become a leader in environmentally sustainable development through a well designed and implemented carbon tax," he added.