Aziz contradicts WB report on people under poverty line
August 31, 2008
Rejecting the research report projecting that about 38 per cent people of the country are living below the poverty line and that their number is increasing, Finance Adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam on Saturday said the research report is not true.
“I don’t support the research reports of World Bank and Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) as these are not prepared accurately. I think this sort of statement lacks considerable objectivity. There are still many challenges and those challenges are not necessarily for Bangladesh alone in fact the world as a whole is facing similar challenges,” Aziz said at a function on “Climate Change: Food Security in Bangladesh” held at BRAC centre Inn in city yesterday.
He said about the World Bank study report that, the press has misunderstood the report and that gave rise to such an idea. “I think World Bank study had been thoroughly misunderstood by the media and also by many others,” he said.
The Adviser said food production in Bangladesh is satisfactory and there is no serious crisis. “It is not a fair statement that Bangladesh’s food security is at stake because the country has had a bumper production of Boro rice. It has registered a production rise by 55 per cent over the level of 1991-92 fiscal. The govt has given the highest priority to the agriculture sector and provided subsidy to the farmers for cultivating their land in order to produce more food-grains. About 40 per cent higher price is being given while the government is procuring rice from farmers,” he said. He further said that the unemployment situation in the country has not aggravated due to an extra allocation of about Tk 2,000 crore in the budget for the social safety-net programme to create rural employment.
Source: The Bangladesh Today
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