As part of its election campaign, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has promised a few schemes. This includes the “family card.” From the information made available by BNP, the family card scheme is expected to have the following features:
- Targeting: 5 million extreme poor households in the first phase; gradually expanded to cover 40.1 million households
- Recipient: Female member of the household
- Amount: Tk2,500 per household for food (some communique shows Tk2,000 per household)
- Total requirement: Tk12,000 crore per year (10.28% of the total social safety net budget)
- Budget allocation: BNP forecasts to save Tk9,500 crore by reducing overlaps in social safety net programs and allocating it to the family card scheme
BNP’s proactiveness in addressing the emerging and protracted economic and social issues of Bangladesh is laudable. However, there is a risk that the proposed schemes catch the party off guard if it wins the election and forms the government.
It is therefore important to assess these proposed schemes with a critical lens to safeguard the future elected government from potential pitfalls.
Price hike and inflation have been a major challenge in Bangladesh in recent years. Food has become dearer to many households.
A 2024 WFP (World Food Program) report indicated that roughly 36% of households were forced to rely on “less preferred or less expensive food” due to price hikes. Rice prices increased by 15-20% year on year.
Unofficial accounts and recent studies show deepening extreme poverty. World Bank’s Bangladesh Poverty and Equity Brief (October 2025) suggests extreme poverty may rise to 9%; this will mean an additional 3 million people will fall back to extreme poverty.
On this background, the rationale for such family cards could be found in short term protection of the most vulnerable households while the economy corrects its course.
These schemes should be short term because they do not address the systemic issues that necessitate these interventions.
Food price inflation, deepening extreme poverty -- all have roots to macro-economic and micro-economic dysfunctions. In the long run, the government is expected to address these issues.
In the short-run, the government may opt for such schemes to protect the households from slipping into deep poverty as this would make economic reforms even more difficult.
As the case is for short-term and not long-term, there has to be a clear exit strategy for the scheme. It has to be time-bound.
For now, BNP’s communique does not explain for how long a family will continue to receive the benefit from a family card.
As the card is expected to stop slippage of households to extreme poverty, there is a case that this is provided to households that are currently extremely poor or that may slip into extreme poverty.
Targeting effectiveness is important for such schemes to succeed. In Bangladesh, such households usually are covered by several different schemes -- old age allowance, allowance for widow, deserted and destitute women, allowance for the financially insolvent disabled. It is good to see that BNP aims to increase efficiency in social safety net expenditure and use the “savings” in the proposed family card scheme.
But there are programs beyond safety nets in Bangladesh.
A strong number of extreme poor households are covered under different extreme poverty programs that are run with funds from international development partners. Will these households also be excluded from the family card scheme?
If they are excluded, they will create social discontent; the households are likely to pressurize their local government for inclusion in the list and are also likely to hide their status as a program recipient.
If they are included, their benefits will not essentially multiply -- they will just subsidize their expenditure on food or they are more likely to trade the food in the market for cash. This reduces the effectiveness of the scheme.
It is therefore a stretch that the scheme is planned to be scaled to cover 44.1 million households. Well-off families in both urban and rural areas will not line up to redeem Tk2,500 per month. They will either give away to their needy staff or acquaintance or trade it off.
This will further reduce the effectiveness of the scheme. There is absolutely no case to scale this scheme to include all households of Bangladesh.
It should be limited to those in urban and rural households who are extremely poor or food-insecured or are at risk to fall back to extreme poverty.
In this context, we need to ask whether the original assumption -- that the supply of food worth Tk2,500 will cushion the households from food price inflation -- will hold.
To answer this question, we need to understand how much food can be bought for Tk2,500 for a 4-member household.
The estimate will vary between rural and urban areas. Based on the TCB price list, for Dhaka, a household can purchase about 40 kg coarse rice or 40 kg unpacked flour or 14.53 litr loose soyabean oil or 27.77 kg lentils. The households are likely to buy more of the commodity for which the market price has inflated the most and create a basket.
But here is the catch, a good number of the extreme poor households have rice stock for 4-5 months from their leased land. These households are likely to use the card to buy the food and sell it off in the market.
With the savings from two month’s trade, they can buy a goat or a flock of 20 chickens. Our experience from different cash transfer programs shows that this is a very likely scenario when the households can gain more from trading the commodity supplied rather than using it for their own benefit.
This is the same reason why in malaria endemic countries, millions of mosquito nets that are distributed for free eventually end up in the market for trade. For the family card to work, the incentives of the households will have to align with the incentives of the government.
Furthermore, as of September 2025, there were 6 million active TCB smart family cards which have been issued to provide subsidized food to low-income households in Bangladesh. Will the family card issued under a possible BNP administration replace the smart family card or build on it?
The government already has spent millions for such programs. Future programs must leverage what exists to reduce wastage of scarce public funds.
It would be wise for BNP to leverage the ultra-poor graduation programs implemented by the Palli Karma-Shahayak Foundation (PKSF) or BRAC.
The organizations have proven that households can be brought out of poverty with investment exceeding no more than TK 70,000 per household over a period of 2-3 years and through a range of asset transfer, cash transfer, micro-finance, and livelihood development support.
For the family card to be more than an electoral promise, BNP must work on a technical roadmap that addresses targeting leakage, the resale incentive, and integration with current TCB systems.
