MDG Progress Report 2009 released; malnutrition, resource shortfall major problems in achieving MDGs

By AKM Moinuddin

Dhaka, Sept 15 (UNB) – Bangladesh has made significant progress in certain areas towards achieving MDGs (millennium development goals) by 2015 that include reducing child mortality, primary schooling, and gender parity in primary and secondary level education.
Bangladesh, as the country most vulnerable to the global menace of climate change, needs to get urgent support pledged by the world leaders at the Copenhagen Climate Summit and it expects to receive a 15 percent share of the fund to address the additional challenges that climate change poses to Bangladesh’s MDG gains.
Bangladesh Progress Report 2009 on MDGs shows that the country has also achieved remarkable progress in reducing the incidence of communicable diseases and in improving indicators on environmental changes.
However, overall education sector faces significant challenges in achieving the targets which include reaching the marginal populations, ensuring survival rate to grade V, improving quality of primary education and increasing share of education in government budget.
The Progress Report, 4th of its kind, was released at a function at Sonargaon Hotel in the city on Wednesday afternoon. General Economic Division and Planning Commission jointly arranged the report launching ceremony. The report will be placed in the 2010 MDG review meeting in New York.
General Economic Division and Planning Commission of the government, the UN system in Bangladesh and five Thematic Working Groups prepared the report titled `Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report 2009’.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith, Planning Minister Air Vice Marshal (retd) AK Khandker, Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni, Economic Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Mashiur Rahman and member of General Economic Division Prof Dr Shamsul Alam, among others, spoke on the occasion.
The progress report shows that Bangladesh is on its way to achieve targeted prevalence of poverty by 2015; however, the hunger target might not be achieved due to the challenges of food security in the country.
“The key challenges to future poverty reduction include lack of programme coordination and harmonization, structural constraints, lack of diversity in food crop, chronic under nutrition in children and weakness in proper targeting and efficiency,” the report says.
Notable progress through a range of initiatives has also been made in the field of democratic governance and human rights, it says.
Meanwhile, maternal mortality rate (MMR) declined by 40 percent during the 1990-2005 period but remained stable in the following four years that has become a matter of concern for Bangladesh.
Addressing the function, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said that though Bangladesh has progressed much in some areas, malnutrition remains a real problem of Bangladesh.
“I think Bangladesh is on the right track in achieving MDGs though there are some areas where problems need to be addressed,” he said.
Planning Minister AK Khandker said Bangladesh has achieved certain targets and efforts are on to achieve the remaining targets within the next five years. He emphasized enhancement of global support in this regard.
Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said: “It’s quite inspiring to know that in most of the sectors we’ve done reasonably well. In our mixed achievement, during the last two decades, we’ve achieved good progress in the areas of net enrolment in primary education, in gender parity, infant and child mortality, immunization coverage, supply of drinking water, and sanitation.”
She, however, said there is need to work more in other areas like employment generation, reduction in the dropout rate in primary education, increasing adult literacy rate, creation of more employment for women, reduction of maternal mortality, increasing the forest coverage and spreading ICT knowledge.
Dipu Moni said: “We’ve a challenging task ahead. The most significant challenge is to sustain the achievements we’ve achieved so far… only five years are left to reach the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. It’s time for us to look into these matters with due determination to redouble our efforts.”
PM’s Adviser Dr Mashiur Rahman said resource shortfall is the major problem that the country has been facing in achieving the MDGs.
END/UNB/