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Safety net spending to rise 19pc next fiscal year

Rejaul Karim Byron
Expenditure under the social safety net programme, including allowance for the elderly and widows, will see a 19 percent rise in the next fiscal year.
The decision came at a meeting on Sunday with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in the chair, where it was agreed that the number of beneficiaries and the amount of money under the programme will be increased.
At present, Tk 5,364 crore has been allocated for the 18 programmes under the social safety net, which will be increased by more thanTk 1,000 crore in fiscal 2016-17, said an official of the social welfare ministry.
Of the schemes, the biggest is the one for the elderly, whose count of beneficiaries will be increased by 5 percent or 1.5 lakh people in the next budget.
At present, the total number of beneficiaries for old-age allowance is 30 lakh. Each beneficiary gets Tk 400 per month and from the next fiscal year it will beTk 500.
The government last year prepared a national social security strategy with the aim of bringing all vulnerable citizens under the social safety net.
More than one crore people will qualify for old age allowance if all poor people above 60 years were to be brought under the social safety net scheme as per the plan.
The strategy also recommended giving Tk 800 as allowance per month to the beneficiaries.
Introduced in 1997-98 with four lakh beneficiaries who got Tk 100 each, Bangladesh's old-age allowance scheme has one of the lowest transfer values in the world.
It is well below the value of Nepal's senior citizens' allowance programme, according to the document.
Due to fund constraints, the old-age allowance programme could not be expanded as much as the document recommends, but efforts are ongoing to raise it gradually, said a finance ministry official.
The allowances for the widow, deserted and destitute women will be raised to Tk 500 from existing Tk 400 in the forthcomingyear.
The allowance for financially-insolvent disabled people will be Tk 600 in fiscal 2016-17, up from Tk 500.
The number of beneficiaries under the programme, whose allocation is Tk 360 crore this year, will be increased to 7.5 lakh next fiscal year from existing 6 lakh.
The programme started in fiscal 2005-06 with a budget of Tk 25 crore; each person was given Tk 200 per month then. The allocation for it isTk 360 crore. The maternity allowance programme for the poor lactating women will be extended to all municipalities next fiscal year. At present, the scheme is being run in 10 municipalities.
The fund to provide assistance to cancer, kidney and liver cirrhosis patients will be raised byTk 10 crore toTk 30 crore.
The expenditure shown by the finance ministry for social safety net schemes this fiscal year is Tk 37,546 crore, which is 12.72 percent of the total budget and 2.19 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
Besides these 18 programmes, the government has a total of 145 safety net schemes under the development and nondevelopment budgets, according to the finance ministry.
The pension scheme for the government staff is one of the programmes and it takes up Tk 11,584 crore.