Nawshad Ahmed

Local government reform must continue, keeping future demand for services in view.

Effective political leadership is essential for achieving democratic governance.

In Bangladesh, challenges hindering the achievement of economic equality are: low public expenditure on education, training, health, rural development and social protection.

Public funds allocation to local bodies is discriminatory.

There is no alternative to an M&E policy to ensure quality public spending and better outcome from development expenditure.

It is important to encourage all development players to invest money and energy to maximise their contributions towards the GDP growth.

Competition law is not an end in itself and to use it, we need to have a good understanding of how markets work.

It has been observed that monitoring & evaluation functions within ministries and their departments are poorly understood, under-funded, and underutilised.

Globally, the older people are called senior citizens and they receive various support and benefits.

Unplanned transport infrastructure.

Urban environmental management challenges are quite serious in Bangladesh due to unplanned urbanisation, and with no national policy to regulate it.

Khulna, the third largest city of Bangladesh, with a current population of approximately 950,000 and land area spanning 40.8 square kilometres, is the only city in the country which has been experiencing a negative population growth over the last two decades.

Geographic inequalities can bring political tensions between local government leaders and national level policymakers and politicians.

The paved road network in Bangladesh has increased dramatically from 600 km in 1947, to 3,600 km in 1971, to the current figure of 375,000 km.

Improving road and railway connectivity is crucial for reaping the benefits of Padma Bridge.

The rapid increase in global food prices in recent months have put many countries including Bangladesh in a crisis.

The social protection allocation in the annual budget has consistently increased over the last 14 years. In FY 2008-09, a total of Tk 13,845 crore was allocated for social protection programmes.

The Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), last conducted in 2016, is a comprehensive national survey in Bangladesh.

Recently, while visiting a small town in the south called Raozan, I was impressed to see how there were no empty plastic bottles or used polythene lying around.

Despite the higher authorities’ public expression of dissatisfaction with frequent revisions of government projects, the practice of taking projects to ECNEC meetings to be granted deadline extensions, design changes, expansion of scope and budget enhancements has continued unabated.