Policy Brief
Research summary: Using Direct Taxation to Reduce Inequality and Boost Revenue
About the project
Partner: SwisscontactProject duration:December 2022-January 2023
Bangladesh has been implementing many short-term and long-term plans, such as five-year plans, sectorial plans, social security strategy, delta plans, etc., for its socio-economic development. These plans are crucial policy roadmaps to achieve targeted goals using the country's limited resources. On the one hand, these plans focus on overall economic growth and development; on the other hand, they also emphasize reducing intra- and inter-regional inequality across the country. Though most of these plans in the pre-Covid-19 era had many policy interventions to reduce poverty and inequality, especially in hard-to-reach areas, the main focus of most of the plans in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic shock has been to bring back the economy on its pre-Covid-19 growth trajectory.
Since the urban areas felt the severe burnt from the Covid-19 pandemic, the inflicted areas received higher priorities in economic planning and resource allocation. Consequently, policymakers and planners allocated less sources to develop interventions in hard-to-reach areas, such as char areas in northern river-basin regions or the southern coastal regions. In this review, we investigate the policy space for the development of hard-to-reach areas, such as char, and evaluate these policies' effectiveness in improving the char areas' economic, social, and environmental vulnerabilities.
This study aims to understand the policy space for char area development, i.e., the freedom and ability of the Government to identify and pursue the most appropriate mix of economic and social policies to achieve equitable and sustainable development in char areas that are best suited to its local context. The study reviews different policy documents including 8th Five-Year Plan, Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, Perspective Plan 2041, National Agriculture Policy 2018, National Women Development Policy 2011, National Social Security Strategy 2015, National Plan for Disaster Management (2021-2025 and analyze these documents to identify the provisions for char areas and evaluate whether the proposed policy measures are sufficient to address the socio-economic problems. Thus, this study identifies gaps in policies and their executions and provides recommendations for the integrated char development.