Abstract
Several unexpected impediments have affected the growth and ST momentum of the Bangladesh economy in 2020. The cyclone Amphan struck Bangladesh’s coastal areas in May 2020 and the country is under the Covid-19 pandemic since March 2020. For Covid-19, the challenge is to develop programmes that can work as automatic stabilisers and can be expanded to provide income support to the worst affected households. Many of the workers in the informal sector and self-employed (including those in the gig economy) find their sources of livelihoods destroyed by the crisis. Some innovations are required to expand the gig economy to provide income support to these workers. What is important is to work out a comprehensive package that can simultaneously provide stimulus to economic activities and protect the labour force in need of jobs. The self-employed workers and most informal labour do not have the benefits of traditional work arrangements; and hence, universal social protection is needed to sustain their livelihoods.
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Notes
- 1.
Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science Engineering, https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd-40299423467b48e9ecf6.
- 2.
Many examples may be cited. For instance, the use of home-made ‘lobon-gur’ (a mixture of easily available salt and unrefined sugar) instead of imported premade oral solution packets–which were difficult to transport to remote rural villages in view of the poor transport and communications infrastructure of the 1980s—resulted in spectacular decline in child mortality and improvement in women’s health. Similarly, bringing testing kits and treatment facilities to the community level rather than taking tuberculosis patients to the hospitals, which were located too far away, rapidly reduced the incidence of tuberculosis in the country.
- 3.
For example, machine learning algorithms equipped to differentiate a poor locality from a rich one may be adopted to identify the beneficiaries.
- 4.
Among some major Asian countries, Bangladesh lags behind only Indonesia (more than 4% of its GDP) in terms of the volume of stimulus packages relative to their respective GDP. For example, Vietnam’s stimulus packages amount to 3.4% of GDP, Pakistan’s 3.1%, Malaysia’s 2.8%, Maldives’s 2.8%, China’s 2.5%, Afghanistan’s 2%, India’s 1.1% and Sri Lanka’s 0.2%.
- 5.
A case study conducted on the graduate students of Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) indicates that the city dwelling university students are undergoing an increased level of fear and tension because of the lockdown and Covid-19. Drastic changes in their daily lives have occurred including staying at home, changes in work habits and working from home as much as possible, spending more time with family members, performing more household chores, shop** for groceries and other necessities online. See, Mujeri (2020).
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Mujeri, M.K., Mujeri, N. (2021). Unexpected Challenges: Covid-19 and Cyclone Amphan. In: Structural Transformation of Bangladesh Economy. South Asia Economic and Policy Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0764-6_9
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