Dr Selim Raihan, executive director of SANEM, has proposed a two-year Recovery Plan for Bangladesh instead of the 8th Five Year Plan (8FYP).
In his proposal, Dr Raihan has recommended eight points:
1. The two-year Recovery Plan will aim at taking the country's economy back to its December 2019 state.
2. Delay the launch of the 8th Five Year Plan for two years until 2022. The 8FYP needs to be re-written, as a large part of it seems to be irrelevant at this point.
3. Devise fiscal stimulus packages and monetary policies to support the RMG and other export and domestic-market oriented industries and SMEs. At the moment, the focus is on the RMG sector only, which is not helpful at all.
4. Devise and extend social protection programmes for a large number of marginalised, near-marginalised and vulnerable population.
5. Undertake ‘politically feasible' policy reforms in the trade, tax and banking sectors.
6. Explore ways to generate domestic and external resources to support the fiscal stimulus and eased monetary policy measures.
7. Suspend the LDC graduation target for at least three more years.
8. Raise the voice at global level to push the SDG target year from 2030 to 2035.