For the year 2015, Bangladesh’s ranking in UNDP’s Human Development Index has remained unchanged and was placed among the median countries.
Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index that measures income, education and health. Since 1990, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been calculating the index for every country.
With an HDI value of 0.57 out of a maximum possible 1, Bangladesh is put at 142 out of 188 countries, according to the report launched at the NEC Conference Room in Dhaka yesterday.
Last year, Bangladesh was placed at the same spot out of 187 countries.
Bangladesh’s HDI improved faster between 2000 and 2010 like it did from 1990 to 2000, the report says. However the improvement was slower in the last four years.
Although, Bangladesh’s human development index remained unchanged in 2015, it has progressed in terms of life expectancy, education and per capita income. The HDI progressed by about 1.5% every year on an average in the last couple of decades.
Among the South Asian countries, Bangladesh is far behind Sri Lanka (73rd), India (130th) and Bhutan (132nd), but ahead of Nepal (145th) and Pakistan (147th).
Commenting on the report, renowned economist Prof Wahiduddin Mahmood said, “Bangladesh is doing well in human development but recognition came late.”
He said Bangladesh’s economic growth has so far been driven by a “replication approach with respect to low-productivity in readymade garments export, low-skilled labour force and expansion of micro-enterprises.”
“For the higher growth trajectory, Bangladesh needs to switch from replication to innovation in terms of productivity and skill for sustainable development,” he said. “Factory owners are interested to pay overtime to workers but reluctant to invest in technology and skill development.”
Director of the Human Development Report Office and lead author of the report, Dr Selim Jahan, said Bangladesh is moving forward but not faster than other countries. “However, if we look at the sub indexes, Bangladesh is doing far better than India and Pakistan,” he said.
“In a changing world, enhancing human development through work requires holistic policy interventions. Unless action is taken, many people, particularly those already marginalised, might be left behind,” he said.
Senior Secretary of the Economic Relations Division, Mohammad Mejbahuddin, said: “It is encouraging to find synergies between national development plan and recommendations from the report, which are very relevant for us. The key task is to translate those policy recommendations into actions.”
Assistant Administrator and Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, Haoliang Xu, said: “In order to ensure that the workforce is capable of adapting to rapidly changing demands, the governments need to make strategic investments into education and health care.”
According to the report, despite extremely rapid adoption of technology in recent years, in 2014, 2.5 billion people in Asia and the Pacific did not have access to the Internet. Of them, 1.4 billion were in South Asia alone.
While acknowledging the central role of the Asia and the Pacific region in the process of globalisation in the 1990s, the report noted that trends in outsourcing and offshoring of service jobs are changing in the region.
