MDG to SDG - A Bangladesh success story and financing challenges

1. MDG to SDG
A Bangladesh success story and financing
challenges

2. Millennium Development Goals
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in
history, with all 189 United Nations Member States, including Bangladesh, adopted the
UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to
reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of
2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and
quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions - income
poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender
equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights - the
rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.

3. Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which follow and expand on the MDGs, are a
new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that UN member states are expected to use to
frame their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years up to 2030.
At the Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, the 193 UN member states
adopted the 2030 development agenda titled Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals to end
poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030, covering topics on
Poverty, Food, Health, Education, Women, Water, Energy, Economy, Infrastructure, Inequality,
Habitation, Consumption, Climate, Marinosystems, Ecosystems, Institutions, and Sustainability.

4. Sustainable Development Goals
The goals and targets of the SDG will
stimulate action over the next 15 years in
areas of critical importance for humanity and
the planet.
The five elements of the Sustainable
Development Goals are:
 People
 Planet
 Prosperity
 Peace
 Partnership

5. Bangladesh – A MDG Success Story
Bangladesh remains one of the poorest countries in the world with 43% of people living
on less than $1.25 per day, according to the World Bank, but it has also become one of
the eleven emerging economies of the world.
Bangladesh is one of the forerunners in achieving the first of eight Millennium
Development Goals - reducing extreme poverty rates by a half between 1990 and 2015. In
fact, Bangladesh received special honors from the UN for halving the number of people in
extreme poverty (from 58 percent to 29 percent) more than a couple of years ahead of
time.
The country with their MDG
achievements has become a
Development Surprise for the
world. The latest MDG scorecard,
published September 2015, shows
out of the eight goals, Bangladesh
has achieved four goals and is in
track to achieve the other four goals.

6. Bangladesh – A MDG Success Story
Bangladesh has reversed some of the worst poverty indicators in the world in recent years,
managing to reduce maternal mortality by 40% between 2001 and 2010. Girls
outnumber boys in school and extreme poverty rates were cut in half between 1990
and 2015. But serious problems remain, including ‘all aspects of the environment’ such as
climate change, deforestation, water-logging and an increase in CO2 emissions.
Goals Base Year (1990) Current Status Target by 2015
Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
(population below national upper poverty
Line, percent)
56.6 31.5 (2010) 29.0
Achieving universal primary education
(Net enrollment in primary education, percent)
60.5 97.3 (2013) 100
Reducing child (under-5) mortality
(per 1000 live births)
146 42 (2012) 48
Improving maternal health
(Maternal mortality ratio, per 100,000 live births)
574 194 (2010) 144

7. Bangladesh and SDGs
With the MDG achievements, Bangladesh has built up a confidence to tackle the challenges
of SDGs and achieve most of the goals by 2030, but some goals are so difficult where lot of
investments will be required in achieving those targets. For example,
• The end of poverty in all forms and end of hunger will mean to eliminate the poverty in all
areas of the country.
• Achievement of gender equality, will mean major changes in the law of inheritance, besides
eliminating all harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage etc.
• To ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all will surely
need heavy investment with infrastructure build up and technological innovations.
• To promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to
justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive intuitions at all levels, there must be
efforts and visible indications to significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen
the recovery and return of stolen goods and combat all forms of organized crime.
• Climate and environment actions will need extensive help from the international arena to build
up better policies and raise public awareness.

8. Financing the SDGs
Achieving the SDGs in all countries will require
additional global investment in the range of
US$5 trillion to US$7 trillion per year up to
2030.
Developing countries will need between US$3.3
trillion and US$4.5 trillion a year to finance basic
infrastructures, food security, climate change
mitigation and adaptation, and health and
education, according to the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development. But at
the current level of public and private
investment, there will be an annual financing
gap of US$2.5 trillion, or 3.2 percent of world
GDP.

9. Financing the SDGs
Financing will be a major challenge for Bangladesh to attain the Sustainable
Development Goals as it already faces deficiency in its spending on social security,
education and healthcare, and experience further slowdown of FDI and ODA as the
country has already graduated to the status of Lower Middle Income one.
In the public sector finance of the country, domestic resource mobilization is 12.1 per
cent of the GDP, illicit financial flow 1.2 per cent, foreign aid 1.6 per cent and public
investment 6.9 per cent. Private sector investment has been stagnant at 22.1 per cent for
the last three years, foreign direct investment only 0.9 per cent, which is comparatively
low, and remittances 7.9 per cent remains a volatile prospect.

10. Financing the SDGs
To achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, some suggested avenues are raising revenue collection,
utilizing foreign assistance, keeping pace in remittance earnings, and raising investment for
employment generation to implement the goals. To overcome the reducing ODA
constraints the need for creating environment for more private-sector investment has
become critical. Additional flow of financing must come mostly from domestic sources to
mobilize the needed finance for SDGs implementation.
Bangladesh has to raise the domestic resource mobilization up to 18 per cent of gross
domestic product from the current 12.1 per cent through increasing revenue collection
along with preventing illicit financial flow from the country, which is estimated at 1.2 per
cent of GDP a year. The level of private investment which remained almost stagnant over
the last few years at around 22 per cent of GDP should also be increased to 29 per cent.
Increasing foreign direct investment up to three per cent to four per cent of GDP from
the existing 0.9 per cent, proper and efficient use of foreign loans and aid, will be helpful
in achieving the goals. Bangladesh also should get at least 2.5 per cent of its GDP yearly as
foreign aid, which is now stuck at only 1.6 per cent.

11. Domestic resource mobilization and future
As opposed to an unsustainable development path through reliance on resource from
external sources, domestic resource mobilization can lead towards a self-sustaining
development for the country. Establishing a sound and transparent taxation system,
developing a functioning financial system, a developed capital market, public private
partnership can be some modes of generating the flow of domestic resources.
Domestic resource mobilization effort in Bangladesh is constrained by low level of public
expenditure and investment, among many other factors. Thus the country is posed with
dual challenges of generating domestic resources and utilizing that resource efficiently for
increased productivity and economic development. Thus while addressing the issue of
domestic resource mobilization both policy and institutional aspects have to be
considered.
Bangladesh with its aim to become a Middle-income nation by 2021 and to get the status
of a Developed country by 2041, has to work hard towards achieving its Sustainable
Development Goals cascading it into every policy, guidelines, financial and institutional
structures. The earnest desire and action of the government, combined with the support
from the international arena, as well as the domestic financing and private sector market
can only pave the way for a bright and sustainable future for the country.

12. Resources
• http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/19/sustainable-development-goals-
united-nations
• Millennium Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report (September 2015), General
Economics Division (GED), Bangladesh Planning Commission
• Report on the post-2015 development agenda for Bangladesh (May 2013), United Nations in
Bangladesh
• Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges for Bangladesh, Dhiraj Kumar Nath (September,
2015), Editorial, The Daily Sun
• http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/
• http://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/dhaka-ready-face-new-challenges-143818
• http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/25/sheikh-hasina-i-want-to-make-
bangladesh-poverty-free-sustainable-development-goals
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals
• http://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/exhibition/2015/Presentations/Bangladesh.pdf
• http://www.bd.undp.org/content/bangladesh/en/home/post-2015/sdg-overview.html
• http://cpd.org.bd/index.php/press-reports-cpd-dialogue-national-level-implementation-
challenges-2030-agenda/
• http://post2015.org/2014/12/10/implementing-post-2015-agenda-in-bangladesh-through-
domestic-resource-mobilisation/