‘Allocate 16pc of budget for education’

Save the Children on Wednesday called for allocating at least 16 per cent of the upcoming national budget (or about 2.6 per cent of GDP) to the education sector.

The organisation has also called for strengthening child-focused initiatives in the budget.

Budget for the health sector should earmark at least 11 per cent of the total budget (or about 1.6 per cent of GDP) and early childhood care and development programmes should receive specific focus, it said in a media statement.

For the implementation of child rights and development, Save the Children has drawn the attention of policymakers to increase the allocation in the national budget to be announced by the government on Thursday.

Save the Children in Bangladesh has conducted an in-depth analysis of the child-focused initiatives in the national budget in Bangladesh for the fiscal year FY2022-23 (FY23).

The study sheds light on the current state of child-centric allocations, distribution of financial resources, and review of relevant policies aimed at promoting the welfare, development, and rights of children in the country.

Key findings from the analysis indicate that while a significant share of the national budget is allocated to child-focused activities, there are opportunities to further improve the distribution and effectiveness of these resources.

Based on the analysis, Save the Children put emphasis on the following key recommendations and would like to draw the attention of the policymakers.

The National Budget should inform reporting on child budgets introducing a life-cycle approach, where resources will be distributed based on children's age-specific requirements.

A standard child budget framework is required to carry out the exercise. The framework may guide the development of a participatory budgetary process and ensure reporting of sectoral/ministry-wise allocations, expenditure, age-specific spending, coverage of participants, and programmatic impact, it said.

New initiatives should be undertaken to strengthen community-based health services for children.

Share of schemes with 100 per cent child-centric activities should be raised at least 10 per cent (currently estimated at 6.9 per cent of the social safety net programme budget for FY 2022-23) of the SSNP budget.

Identifying the most vulnerable children including street children and physically challenged children groups, 100 per cent of them should come under provisions of SSNP, it added in the statement.

System strengthening and coordination are required to increase the quality of child-focused social services. The establishment of a separate directorate for children may help the cause by many folds, the organisation said in the recommendations.

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