Bangladesh Bank governor Dr Atiur Rahman on Saturday said success in fast-tracking poverty eradication and accelerating sustainable development will hinge on strong broad-based civil society engagement at country level and on heightened international support and cooperation at regional and global levels. He said Bangladesh has made eye-catching progress on food security, pointing to decline in food imports as the evidence.
“But at the household level we should worry that dietary diversity often gets neglected as the very poor mainly eat rice with very few extras. So we need to track dietary diversity as our health outcomes are more related to this than the quantity of food we eat,” Atiur said.
The central bank chief was addressing a function titled ‘Global Meet on Sustainable Development’ at NababNawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Bhaban, University of Dhaka.
Environment and Forest Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud and noted economist Dr QuaziKhaliquzzaman were also present.
Atiur said despite some spectacular successes in attaining MDGs in many countries including Bangladesh, reform initiatives related to MDG attainment in some areas have often tended to be bogged down by resistance from the beneficiaries of the “status quo”.
“Both the national and international governance structures failed to do much in breaking this evil nexus of vested interests,” he said.
The BB governor said certainly the UN MDGs provided a useful unifying campaign theme and framework for concerted thrust of global development cooperation in combating poverty, deprivation and environmental degradation.
Similarly, he said, post-2015 sustainable development agenda consultations “like the one we are having here” are helping to achieve strong broad based civil society engagements with active participation of the relevant policy makers at all levels.
He said Bangladesh Bank is upholding financing flows to output and employment generating SMEs, and to green initiatives like renewable (solar/biogas) energy generation, effluent treatment, adoption of energy efficient, emission minimizing in-house practices an processes in banks and financial institutions.
Bangladesh Bank has established a new department on Green Banking and Corporate Social Responsibility to take this socially and environmentally-friendly financing forward in line with global expectations. (Source: UNB)
