The government should improve the quality of public expenditure and ensure equitable distribution of such expenditure among the different income groups of the society for gaining better results, said speakers in a dialogue in Dhaka on Saturday.
In the dialogue on ‘Public expenditure accountability in Bangladesh: a disaggregated analysis’, they also said that public expenditure in social sectors in a country like Bangladesh should ensure the share of the poor and disadvantaged people as they could not afford to receive the services from the private sector because of the high cost of services.
Unnayan Shamannay, a non-government research organisation, organised the programme to reveal the outcome of its benefit incidence analysis and programme budgeting analysis of public expenditure on education, health and water sectors at its office on the day.
The studies showed that inequality between the poorest and the richest in getting benefits from public expenditure on education and health sectors had increased in last five years from 2005 to 2010.
‘The richest households of society get more benefits than the poorest from the government expenditure on education and health sectors,’ a study said.
It said that disparity in getting benefits from public expenditure on primary, secondary and tertiary education increased in 2010 from that of in 2005.
The highest level of inequality in the distribution of public expenditure was observed in the highest level of education, it said.
‘The bottom 20 per cent households got only around 5 per cent benefits of total government expenditure on higher education which did not change over the last five years,’ it said.
According to the study, the lowest income group has the lowest participation rate in primary school, secondary school and university level while the highest income group has the highest participation rate.
Secondary education expenditure is also not pro-poor, it said.
In case of impact of government expenditure on public hospital and preventive care, disparity increased slightly over the last five years from 2005 to 2010, it said.
Though the poorest people have better access to the public expenditure in public hospital, the bottom 20 per cent received only 14.8 per cent benefit of such expenditure whereas the richest 20 per cent enjoyed 27 per cent benefit during the time, the study said.
Abdullah Nadvi, senior research associate of Unnayan Shamannay, presented the keynote paper at the programme.
Economist Khondoker Ibrahim Khaled, parliament members Shah Jikrul Ahmed and Rawshan Jahan Shathi, among others, spoke at the programme.
-With New Age input
