Despite some economic recovery from the Covid-19 fallout, challenges still persist largely in health, education, employment generation and poverty reduction in Bangladesh, according to a survey.
Besides, the impact of the pandemic has exacerbated income vulnerability, particularly for women, youth, and the urban poor, it noted.
The findings of the survey 'Socio-Economic Impacts and Policy Responses to Covid-19 in Bangladesh: Lessons for the Future' were presented at a seminar hosted by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
Presided over by BIDS director general Dr Binayak Sen, World Bank (WB) senior economist (poverty and equity global practice) Dr Ayago Wambile presented a keynote.
BIDS senior research fellow Dr Kazi Iqbal discussed the paper.
In a presentation, Mr Wambile said between 2000 and 2016, about 25 million people exited poverty but the achievement takes a major hit in the first 15 months of the pandemic that broke out in March 2020.
The initial projections show that poverty marginally increased in 2020, from 11.3 per cent in 2019 to 11.7 per cent, he added.
In terms of recovery from Covid shocks, he said the effect was unequal, affecting the poor and vulnerable disproportionately, and creating new poor.
The pandemic impacted the work status of half of the population in 15 months after the first set of lockdowns was introduced.
Citing unequal recovery across sectors, Mr Wambile said income recovery was better among those in manufacturing, agriculture and salaried jobs while it was quite slow for self-employed and service-sector workers.
While the labour-market participation rate among the working-age population (15-64 years) decreased only slightly from 51 per cent to 49 per cent between two rounds of the regional survey, the unemployment rate doubled from 9.0 to 18 per cent.
The WB official said food insecurity has heightened vulnerability as the most food-insecure regions are also among the country's poorest areas.
Besides, food inflation has become a key challenge to ensuring food security for people on low incomes.
Under the circumstances, Mr Wambile suggested that the government prepare for other environmental calamities, natural disasters, economic and health-related shocks.
Emphasising infrastructure to monitor impact of future shocks, he said as vulnerability to economic shocks has risen, government and development actors should expand and strengthen the social safety net for those in need.
Mr Wambile also stressed the need for full focus on health system interventions in most vulnerable areas.
He suggested giving special focus on the reversal of learning losses, caused by the extended closure of educational institutions during lockdowns.
On Covid-19 vaccination, Dr Wambile said after initial delays in the delivery of vaccine doses, the immunisation campaign picked up from July 2021 but vaccine coverage is still low, with a high degree of variability across socio-economic characteristics.
Only 7.0 per cent of the respondents reported at least one person from their households took a dose, he cited.
However, differing with the findings on immunisation, Dr Iqbal said Bangladesh administered a total of 318,248,833 doses of vaccine covering 82.38 per cent of the total population which is quite high than many developed countries.
Food insecurity here not just worsened by the pandemic, but it is also a consequence of the Russia-Ukraine war, which was not cited in the survey, he noted.
