REJAUL KARIM BYRON and AHSAN HABIB

Social safety net programmes, such as Open Market Sales (OMS) and Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF), provided less help to the actual poor, despite the government boasting about the impact of those schemes on reducing moderate and extreme poverty, according to a taskforce report.

The impact of those programmes was low because of an unclear focus, low benefits, and persistent targeting errors, the report, submitted to the interim government last week, said.

Using the 2022 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), the report estimated that social protection programmes contributed to reducing extreme poverty by only 0.6 percentage points and moderate poverty by 0.8 percentage points between 2010 and 2022.

“Most schemes fail to align with the core objective of addressing poverty, and the absence of robust income support measures leaves a critical gap in tackling both moderate and extreme poverty,” it said.

Between 2010 and 2022, the poverty rate declined from 31.5 percent in 2010 to 18.7 percent in 2022, an average annual decline of 1.07 percentage points, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

Over the same period, extreme poverty followed a similar trajectory, dropping from 17.6 percent to 5.6 percent, an average annual decline of 1 percentage point.

The number of people in poverty declined from 4.54 crore in 2010 to 3.09 crore in 2022, while the corresponding fall in extreme poverty is estimated to have been from 2.53 crore to only 93 lakh, BBS data showed.

These outcomes could improve significantly if inclusion errors were corrected and resources reallocated to poor households, said the taskforce, which was formed on September 10 last year.

It was established to develop strategies to boost the economy and mobilise resources for equitable and sustainable development.

Those adjustments to poverty alleviation schemes, the report said, could increase the reduction in extreme poverty to 1.3 percentage points and moderate poverty to 2.5 percentage points.