Big projects taken to address rural development

Economics Professor of Dhaka University Abul Barakat said that poverty is measured by 15 units such as food security, education, health and employment. His assessment of rural and urban poverty rates were: “The poverty percentage is higher than the government run figure.” Experts discussed 6 different poverty alleviation projects run by IFAD in Bangladesh. Proffessor Abul also said: “In Bangladesh 75% of the total population live in villages where government and development organizations need to take 5 to 20 year long mega projects to develop them.” Under the ‘Promoting Agricultural Commercialization and Enterprises’ (PACE) project, the Bangladesh government and funded by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are implementing 3 project to help the poorest and the most marginalized people across the country. Under the 6 year-long project from 2015 to 2020 in total 4, 52,000 people will receive financial and technical support and IFAD will fund USA $40 million. Another government initiative called ‘Rural Radio Initiative’ (RRI), funded by IFAD is working in coastal areas to build awareness about climate change, agriculture and the environment through radio shows. Ministry of Local Government, rural development and cooperatives and local government division are implementing another project with ADB, IFAD and KfW called ‘Coastal Climate Resilience Infrastructure Project’. People from mainly 12 coastal areas will receive training and technical support and enhance their accessibility through development of climate resilience infrastructure and socio-economic opportunities, and people’s safety, as outlined by the project overview. Rural poverty in the coastal areas is estimated to be 35% to 39%, is higher than the national average and the study read that by 2050 climate change could impact that percentage by 14%. While 87% of the roads in the country would be substantially inundated due to climate change by 2050. Farhana Haque Rahman, director general of Inter Press Service (IPS), Shameem Reza of Dhaka University also addressed the programme.