**3.2 Budgetary trends, allocations for social protection in public expenditure**

The Ministry of Finance publishes a comprehensive list of SNPs every year with their coverage and budgetary allocations in its budget documents. The document also compares the public spending on SNPs and the total development and non-development expenditures of the government. Reflecting the government's commitment to social protection, budgetary allocations have grown in absolute terms as well as a share of GDP. The trend of allocation for social protection and social empowerment and their shares in the national budget and GDP is presented in **Table 3**. The allocation for social protection programs increased from 1.3% of GDP in 1998 to 2.3% in FY2016. Since then it has stabilized around 2% of GDP. Although this level of funding is modest by international standards, when measured against the government's tight budget situation, this represents a substantial commitment, accounting for 13% of total government spending, and reflects the high priority accorded by the government to this aspect of the social development policy. Government's spending on social protection programs in the FY 2016–2017 is 33066.62 core Taka which is 13.28% of the total budget and 2.31% of the GDP [33]. On the other hand, government's spending for the social empowerment programs is 12163.40 core Taka (3.57% of the budget and 0.62% of the GDP) in FY 2016–2017.

## **3.3 Assessment on proposed programs and sub-programs/projects**

Bangladesh's current social protection system is complex, comprising a large number of programs and managed by many ministries. According to a comprehensive official compilation prepared by the Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh is implementing a total of 144 (including 10 newly added programs) SNPs according to the budget 2014–2015. These programs are classified in four different categories. These are (i) Cash Transfer (22 programs), (ii) Food Security (9 programs), (iii) Micro-Credit and Miscellaneous Funds (20 programs), (iv) Development Sector (93 programs including newly introduced 10 development programs). However, many of these programs do not qualify as social protection as well as for the purpose of calculation of social protection index. Among these, 37 programs are classified into: social protection and social empowerment which are under cash transfer, food security and development sector programs and miscellaneous funds. However, among those 37 programs, the most remarkable SNPs in progress are: Allowances for the Widow, OAA, Deserted and Destitute Women, Allowances for Financially Insolvent Persons with Disabilities, Allowances for Urban, Maternity Allowance Program for the Poor Lactating Mothers, Low-income Lactating Mothers, Grants for Residents in Government Orphanages and Other Institutions, Honorarium for Freedom Fighters, Capitation Grants for Orphan Students in Non-government Orphanages, Pension for Retired Government Employees and their Families, Ration for Shaheed Families and Injured Freedom Fighters, VGF, Block Allocation for Disaster Management, VGD, TR Food, GR. The major programs in progress are OAA, Allowance for the Disabled, Allowance for the Widowed, Deserted and Destitute Women, VGD, VGF, Freedom Fighter Allowance,


*Landscape of Enhanced Access to Social Protection, Safety Nets and Increased Resilience… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99270*

> **Table 3.**

*Budget allocation and expenditure on social protection programs.*

Stipend for Secondary and Higher Secondary Students, PSEP, Stipend for Disabled Students, Maternity Allowance, Freedom Fighter Allowance etc. [17].

A strategic review of the social safety net programs by life cycle shows that although about 65% of the programs are seeking to address life-cycle related risks and vulnerabilities, there are serious gaps remain. For example, programs for addressing pregnancy and early childhood and old age risks have low coverage (excluding the government service pensions). Similarly, programs for addressing the disability challenges are very small. Bangladesh will face new challenges such as an aging population, increasing rural–urban migration and growing urbanization. The social security system needs to address these new challenges to keep the risks and vulnerabilities at minimum as possible, and potentially to eradicate the risks and vulnerabilities.

In the social protection programs, there is a dominance of food-security related and rural employment programs. With rapid GDP growth over the past 10 years along with good agricultural performance the incidence of hunger and food poverty is being reduced substantially. There is also evidence that labor market in agriculture is tightening as reflected in growing agricultural real wages. In view of this changing economic and agriculture landscape, nature of poverty and the risk profile is also changing, with remaining pockets of poverty in the country. These are char, haor, coastal belt, hill districts etc. These pockets of poverty area cannot reap the fruits of the country's economic progress in the last decade. This clearly indicates that the policy makers require a careful review of the adequacy of the present social protection to meet the social security requirements of Bangladesh's population in the 21st Century.

Many social protection programs focus on addressing the risks faced by the rural poor in the country. With the evolving economic transformation where both the GDP and employment share of the rural economy is declining and the urban economy is growing with an increasing concentration of poor and vulnerable population in the urban slums, the social security system needs to strategically anticipate these changing economic and social dynamics and develop programs that address the risks and the vulnerability irrespective of areas.

There is significant room for improving the effectiveness of social protection programs. In addition to consolidation and simplification of programs noted earlier, a careful approach to program design and beneficiary selection that aims to increase the participation of the poor and vulnerable and exclude the non-poor will be an important challenge for the new NSSS. A related issue is that the adequacy of attention to marginalized and excluded groups such as vulnerable women, people with disabilities, homeless, high risk groups including people living with HIV/AIDS, dalits, displaced and street children. Absence of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is a major shortcoming of the present social protection system. There is no regular formal mechanism for reviewing the performance either at the national level or by individual programs. Different studies of the impact of a few programs which were supported by donors, have shown that there is a value of conducting regular M&E. The lack of a results-based M&E system is associated with the emergence of large numbers of programs, hence results based M&E can play an important role in helping the government strengthen and improve its SSS based on performance against specified quantitative targets.

#### **3.4 Impact assessment of social security interventions against life cycle risks**

Social protection systems are established, not only to tackle poverty, but to provide families with protection against the challenges, shocks and crises that make them susceptible to falling into or go deeper into poverty [33]. Families are vulnerable to a range of crises which can hit at any time, such as ill health or covariate shocks such as natural disasters or economic recessions. These crisis and risks are being faced by individuals across the life cycle -from birth to old age.

*Landscape of Enhanced Access to Social Protection, Safety Nets and Increased Resilience… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99270*

**Figure 1.** *Life cycle risks. Source: [3].*

The social protection systems gradually evolve to address the risks and challenges across the life cycle. In essence, countries shape their social protection systems to provide support to various demographic groups, although most countries also have a small safety net to address covariate risks or need additional support.

The life cycle framework illustrates the risks faced by a citizen at different stages of the life cycle (**Figure 1**). The poverty profile analysis shows that many existing social programs of Bangladesh fit in the life cycle framework even though this was not used explicitly as a strategic consideration. But the analysis also shows there are major concerns.

A more strategic and analytically elegant way of looking at the structure of the current programs is to classify them in the context of a life cycle framework [33]. The poor and near poor population face shocks and challenges at different stages of the life cycle. Some of the underlying risks if not addressed on time could have life-lasting negative impacts. For example, the special health care needs of a mother during pregnancy and delivery or childcare need during infancy (age 0–2) if not managed well could easily jeopardize the infant's wellbeing for the entire life span. Similarly, the vulnerabilities faced by a poor old person (age 65+) are much more challenging than those faced by a poor person during the working age cycle. A social protection system that recognizes these differences in risks at different stages of the life cycle and seeks to address them will likely provide a more effective support system than one that does not specifically respond to the needs of the life cycle related risks.
