SAFETY NET SYSTEMS FOR THE POOREST PROJECT




                                                                                                                                     IMPROVING
                                                                                                                                    DELIVERY OF
                                                                                                                                     SAFETY NETS

                                                  APPROVAL DATE:          END DATE:             TOTAL COMMITMENT:            IMPLEMENTING AGENCIES:
        BASIC
        INFORMATION
                                                  June 26                 June 30               $745 million                 Department of Disaster Management;
                                                  2013                    2021                                               Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics


     OVERVIEW
     The Government of Bangladesh currently implements several public workfare and humanitarian assistance programs to support the poorest
     populations during periods of seasonal unemployment and to provide protection against disaster-induced shocks. These programs are the
     (i) Employment Generation Program for the Poorest, (ii) Food for Work / Work for Money, (iii) Test Relief, (iv) Vulnerable Group Feeding,
     and (v) Gratuitous Relief, which cover around twelve million beneficiaries with a total budget of BDT 70.19 billion in FY 2019.

     The World Bank is supporting Bangladesh with the Safety Net Systems for the Poorest Project which aims to improve the
     equity, efficiency and transparency of these major safety net programs to benefit the poorest households. The Project
     provides the majority of its resources towards performance-based co-financing for the Employment Generation Program
     for the Poorest implemented by the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) under the Ministry of Disaster
     Management & Relief (MoDMR). The remainder of the financing is provided as technical assistance to DDM, as well
     as to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) under the Statistics & Informatics Division (SID) to support the
     establishment of the country’s first universal social registry.

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CHALLENGE                                                                                                                                 TOWARDS THE
While Bangladesh has halved the number of poor people living in the country since 2000, nearly a quarter still live below                 FUTURE
the poverty line while more than one in ten live in extreme poverty. Safety net programs play a significant role in the                   The Project will leverage
country’s poverty reduction efforts, and public expenditure on such programs is approximately 1.4% of GDP per fiscal year.                improved delivery systems for
Despite the range of interventions, only one-third of the poor are covered by safety nets primarily due to challenges in                  safety net programs to support
identifying households who may qualify for social assistance based on their vulnerability and poverty status, as well as in               the development of the adaptive
identifying inclusion errors in safety net programs. The programs implemented by DDM represent a significant share of the                 capacity of such programs in
social protection budget and improvements to program targeting, as well as other aspects of service delivery, would help                  mitigating and responding
to ensure the right benefits reach the right people at the right time.                                                                    to shocks. In this regard the
                                                                                                                                          use of the NHD across other
                                                                                                                                          government programs is a
                                                                                                                                          strategic priority.
APPROACH
The Project co-finances a portion of Government expenditures on beneficiary wages under the Employment Generation
Program for the Poorest. The co-financing uses a results-based disbursement modality based upon incremental
improvements in the performance of the major safety net programs implemented by DDM. Results targets currently focus
on improvements to (i) household targeting, (ii) administrative systems, and (iii) payment systems, aspects of these
programs which address their equity, efficiency and transparency. These targets would be achieved by the (i)
utilization of poverty data to identify potential recipients of social assistance, (ii) establishment of a common
safety net program management information system (MIS) for better administration, and (iii) scale-up digital
payments of cash benefits. In addition, the Project supports the establishment and operationalization of
the National Household Database (NHD) to facilitate household targeting for safety net programs across
       different ministries and thus help harmonize a major process in the social protection service
                  delivery system.




                                              EXPECTED RESULTS

                                         Greater share of beneficiaries in,            Reduced duplication of                 Improved access and security
                                         and benefits going towards, the               beneficiaries across programs          in the delivery of benefits
                                         bottom expenditure quintile

                                                                                                                                  THE WORLD BANK IN BANGLADESH        |     83