Dhaka – The two-day Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) 2015 ended in Dhaka on Monday with the government and the development partners pledging greater partnership in areas vital to achieve the targets set in the 7th Five Year Plan and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The forum, held after five years, has come up with specific recommendations for a number of priority areas, including agriculture, food security, climate change, energy, infrastructure, governance, health, quality education, social protection and gender mainstreaming.
While inaugurating the forum in the city on Sunday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that the hardworking and resilient people of this country would be the “development miracle” in near future if they get support from her development partners.
The premier also reaffirmed the firm commitment of her government to the broad-based development of the people by ensuring effective use of resources.
The two-day forum brought together ministers, top government officials, representatives of development partners and civil society for finding the areas of strengthening partnership for the country’s development.
At the forum, a communiqué was so prepared with the major focus on sustainable economic growth towards reducing poverty to near zero level.
The communiqué put top priority on creating decent jobs and tackling the barriers to growth while accelerating investment by strengthening infrastructure, especially for facilitating the private sector.
Besides, it addressed building human capital as a prerequisite for growth and poverty reduction by improving the equity, quality and efficiency of health and education services.
The communiqué suggested strengthening of social protection provision for the extreme poor, the marginalised and the most vulnerable people through efficient social protection programmes.
It also advocated enhancing women’s empowerment by implementing existing laws and policies; increasing women’s participation in the labour forces; improving their access to productive resources eliminating child marriage and violence against women.- Agencies
