Only 8.0 per cent of the country’s total employment has been covered by various stimulus packages worth Tk 1.13 trillion announced by the government to help offset the economic fallout from the pandemic.
“If full implementation of the packages is possible, an estimated 12 per cent employment could be reached,” Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Senior Research Fellow Towfiqul Islam Khan said Thursday at a virtual dialogue.
“Our analysis indicates that stimulus packages in Bangladesh had only limited employment impact. They were able to reach only a small share of the total employment,” Mr Khan said while presenting his keynote paper.
For the agricultural sector, the packages reached to only 0.27 million which could be 0.96 million if fully implemented.
About 4.65 million and 0.13 million employment in large industries and services and SMEs respectively have got protection from the support, he said adding the number could be 6.18 million and 0.44 million respectively if fully implemented.
CPD and Oxfam in Bangladesh in association with Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh jointly organised the virtual national dialogue titled “Employment Implications of Stimulus Packages: Challenges for Recovery”.
Professor Mustafizur Rahman, CPD’s distinguished fellow, chaired the event. CPD Executive Director and its Distinguished Fellow Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Labour Secretary KM Abdus Salam, Bangladesh Employers’ Federation Kamran T Rahman, , Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Senior Research Fellow Dr Nazneen Ahmed, Socialist Labour Front President Razequzzaman Ratan, among others, spoke at the event.
The dialogue discussed the outcomes and implications of public policy interventions on employment dynamics induced by the Covid-19 pandemic in Bangladesh.