ISAS Insights

Spending on social programmes to alleviate poverty and address the overall economic needs of the vulnerable segments of the population has been an integral part of the Bangladesh Government’s strategy to tackle poverty. The social programmes/social protection programmes include components of social insurance, labour market policies and social assistance. Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs) in Bangladesh – which fall under the aegis of social assistance programmes – are a set of public measures to protect those who are vulnerable to various social and economic hardships arising from significant declines in income and welfare due to loss of cultivable land, crop failure, unemployment, sickness, maternity and old age or death of income-earning members. Up until the 1990s, spending on social safety nets had constituted less than one per cent of GDP. Spending has been increasing in recent years due to a consistent GDP growth of about five per cent a year. Annual expenditure on safety net programmes amounts to around US $1.64 billion, which is approximately 1.6 per cent of the GDP as of 2011.