Safety net for 3cr poor launched

Star Business Report

The government has launched a new National Social Security Strategy (NSSS) that will bring more than three crore poor people under various social safety net programmes for their entire life.
The scheme was unveiled yesterday by the planning ministry, the Department for International Development (DFID) of the British government and the United Nations Development Programme.
Shamsul Alam, member of the General Economics Division of the planning commission, presented the plan in depth at a programme at the National Economic Council auditorium in the capital.
The goal of the NSSS over the next five years is to ensure more efficient use of resources, strengthen delivery system and progress towards a more inclusive form of social security that tackles life cycle risks, prioritises the poorest and most vulnerable members of the society. The first phase of the new scheme will start in the current fiscal year and end in fiscal 2019-20.
As per the plan, Tk 33,710 crore will be required in fiscal 2015-16 to implement the programme, which is 1.96 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The core life cycle programmes will take up Tk 18,410 crore of the sum.
In the last year of the first phase (fiscal 2019-20), Tk 51,610 crore would be required, which is 1.80 percent of GDP. Of the amount, Tk 32,210 crore would be spent on the core life cycle programme.
Alam said they would implement 60 percent of the programme's target in the first year, 80 percent in the second year and 100 percent in the third year.

Currently, there are 145 social safety net programmes, being implemented by 23 line ministries at a cost of Tk 30,800 crore, according to the strategy paper.
Some programmers overlap and are considered too small to make any real headway in reducing poverty.
Against this backdrop, the government has embarked on the formulation of the NSSS to coordinate and consolidate the existing safety net programmes to achieve better efficiency and results from the money that is being allocated.
The NSSS will stop the leakages by bringing in all 145 social safety net schemes under a comprehensive programme, Alam added. The comprehensive programme will be implemented in five big clusters, which will cover the entire life cycle.
The clusters are: children's progra-mme (for those below the age of 4), programme for school-age children, programme for working-age population, comprehensive pension system for the elderly and programme for people with disability.
The government plans to bring around 60 percent of the 3.57 crore beneficiaries under NSSS in the first year alone.
Of the 3.57 crore beneficiaries, 55 lakh would be covered by the pension scheme, 10 lakh by the disability programme, 75 lakh by the children's programme.
Some 1.79 crore people will be covered by the school-age children programme and more than 32 lakh by the working-age programme.
While approving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the UN has said the countries will have to increase their own financing to meet the targets outlined, Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury told the inauguration ceremony.
At present, about 12.5 percent of the revenue budget is being spent on social safety net programmes, she said.
Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said the government is going to implement the plan to help the ultra-poor cope with the vagaries of their lives.
Sarah Cooke, country representative of DFID Bangladesh, and Pauline Tamesis, country director of UNDP, also spoke.

Use social business to meet SDGs: Yunus

 

Researchers and academics pose during the seventh Global Social Business Summit on the grounds of the Berlin Tempelhof Airport in Germany yesterday. Photo: Yunus Centre

Md Fazlur Rahman

Antipoverty crusader Muhammad Yunus has called for using social businesses to achieve sustainable development goals and transform the world in a viable way.
“We do not want to miss this historic opportunity to transform the world in the next 15 years,” Yunus said in a recorded speech aired on Thursday during the seventh Global Social Business Summit currently taking place in Berlin.
Yunus said although he could not make it to the summit because of sudden illness his heart is with the event.
Themed “Creating a World Without Poverty and Unemployment”, the three-day annual gathering is taking place on the grounds of historic Berlin Tempelhof Airport.
The summit is organised by the Grameen Creative Lab in Germany and the Yunus Centre in Bangladesh in partnership with German tourism agency visitBerlin, the YY Foundation of Germany and Yunus Social Business.
Some are saying that there are too many or too few sustainable development goals (SDGs), according to Yunus. “But the important thing is that you cannot ignore a single goal.”
“These are the goals that are knitted in our hearts. We have firm commitments to achieving these goals -- we have to make sure that it happens.”

He said the 17 SDGs and the Three Zeros -- Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment and Zero Net Carbon Emissions -- together can transform the world in a completely different way.
The GSBS kicked off with performance from Syrian rock band Khebez Dawle. Its members -- Hekmat Qassar, Anas Maghrebi and Muhammad Bazz -- fled the ongoing war in their home country and reached Berlin a month ago as refugees.
They sang, in Arabic lyrics, to communicate what they went through before coming to the German capital.
  The Grameen Bank founder, who was part of the UN Secretary General's advisory committee on the Millennium Development Goals, the predecessor of the SDGs, said although the 17 SDGs were adopted by the United Nations, everyone should play a part in meeting the goals.
“It is also down to us and the youth community to reach the goals,” Yunus said.
He said all human beings are creative and are born entrepreneurs and their creativeness and entrepreneurial skills have to be utilised to achieve the SDGs.
Yunus called for equipping the youth with technology in order to achieve goals.
“If we can empower the youth with technology, they will be unbeatable. And if we can put the social business engine in the picture, we will be able to achieve positive results.”
Hans Reitz, head of Global Social Business Summit, said the social business movement started in Bangladesh and it is expanding to other countries.
The current economic system has to be redesigned in a way that it can shape villages, cities and countries, Reitz added.
Burkhard Kieker, chief executive of visitBerlin, said the summit is taking place at a time when they are setting up 200 beds for Syrian refugees in the two hangars of the historic airport, which is not functional anymore.
The summit can help give new ideas such that these people can have a chance to have a new future, he said.
Lamiya Morshed, executive director of Dhaka-based Yunus Centre, said: “We are trying to make impossible possible through social business.”
During an expert dialogue styled “From the homo economicus to a human economy' on Wednesday, Tania Singer, director of Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, asked the businesses to be more compassionate to create a more caring society.
She said the current incentive system in the business world, which awards individual efforts, has created a sort of addiction among the employees. So, the businesses should award the collective effort behind their success.
Joining her on the stage was Emmanuel Faber, chief executive of French food company Danone, one of the first companies in the world to have started social business.
Faber said: “We have committed ourselves to the model because it is reassuring. We know this will create values in the long run.”
“We know profit is a consequence, but a living organisation has to do it in a sustainable way.” A number of participants said the absence of Yunus in the summit would be largely felt.
“At the same time, we have to keep working, keeping in mind that the idea is bigger than the individuals,” said Uwe Heuser, head of editorial business department of Die Zeit, a German national weekly newspaper, who moderated the dialogue.
One participant said this is the time to show Yunus that the tree of social business has grown.
Also on Thursday, three panel discussions on social business took place.
In the discussion styled 'Spreading Social Business from Bangladesh into the World', Huzzatul Islam Latifee, managing director of Grameen Trust; M Shahjahan, former MD of Grameen Bank; Parveen Mahmud, MD of Grameen Telecom Trust; and Ashraful Hassan, MD of Grameen Telecom, took part.

Emirates airline's first-half profit surges 65pc

 Afp, Dubai

Dubai's Emirates airline said Thursday its net profit surged 65 percent in the first half of the financial year to $849 million (781 million euros) on lower fuel costs and higher passenger numbers.
The largest Middle East carrier said fuel prices were 41 percent lower than a year before, while passenger numbers jumped 10 percent to 25.7 million in the six-month period ending September 30. "This performance reflects the impact of lower fuel prices, and also the airline's continued ability to grow passenger demand in line with significant capacity growth," Emirates said.
This was "despite external challenges such as continued regional unrest and economic malaise in many regions, and increased competition adding downward pressure on yields."