Safety nets miss the poor
Bangladesh’s social protection system is failing to reach a large share of people living in poverty, as rising deprivation exposes persistent weaknesses in spending, beneficiary targeting and programme coordination, according to a General Economics Division (GED) assessment.
The proportion of people living in moderate poverty is estimated to have risen
sharply from 18.7 per cent in 2022 to 27.93 per cent in 2025, while extreme poverty increased from 5.6 per cent to 9.35 per cent over the same period.
Yet the country’s core poverty-focused social protection spending remains only 0.9 per cent of GDP, far below the South Asian average of 3.8 per cent.
The assessment found that 67.1 per cent of poor people were excluded from social protection benefits in 2022, while 62.8 per cent of existing beneficiaries were neither poor nor vulnerable.
The figures point to substantial exclusion and inclusion errors, raising concerns over the effectiveness of public spending on poverty reduction.
The findings were presented on Tuesday (11 August) at a parallel session titled “Reconstructing Fragile Economy and Achieving SDGs” at the National Conference on Navigating Five-Year Strategic Framework for Achieving SDGs: Policy, Partnership and Priorities, held at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Center in Dhaka. The conference was organised by the GED.
The report found that exclusion was particularly pronounced in some major safety net programmes.
Under the Widow Allowance scheme, for example, the exclusion error was as high as 85 per cent, indicating that a large proportion of eligible recipients were not receiving support.
At the same time, the high inclusion error means that a significant amount of public assistance is reaching people who are neither poor nor vulnerable.
The GED identified this as a major source of resource misallocation and a potential avenue for “elite capture” of social protection resources.
The assessment also highlighted the fragmented nature of Bangladesh’s safety net system, with core funding distributed across 95 programmes, many of which overlap.
The smallest 50 programmes together account for only 2.3 per cent of total funding, raising concerns about administrative costs, duplication and weak coordination.
Experts say such fragmentation makes it harder to monitor individual programmes, coordinate interventions and measure their combined impact on poverty and vulnerability.
The system also has a significant coverage gap in urban areas.
Of the 140 social safety net programmes currently in operation, only 23 are specifically designed for urban populations, accounting for just 4 per cent of total spending.
This leaves many poor urban households with limited access to government assistance, particularly people dependent on informal employment and those facing rising living costs.
The findings come as Bangladesh begins implementing a new five-year strategic framework for 2026–2031, aligned with Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 10, which focus on ending poverty and reducing inequality.
Officials said the strategy would seek to improve beneficiary selection, reduce leakage through digital registries and consolidate overlapping programmes.
It also aims to widen coverage among underserved groups, particularly poor households in urban areas.
The need for a more effective social protection system has become increasingly urgent as economic shocks have pushed more people into poverty.
While moderate poverty declined to 18.7 per cent in 2022 and extreme poverty to 5.6 per cent, the GED estimates that both measures increased substantially by 2025.
Against this backdrop, the assessment said strengthening social protection would be critical to making economic growth more inclusive, improving the efficiency of public spending and protecting vulnerable households from further economic shocks.
