State of the Bangladesh Economy in FY2008

Economic condition, bangladesh

CPD’S PRE-ELECTION POLICY BRIEFS: Results from the Identification Exercise

The paper documents various consultations conducted by CPD during the last quarter of the year 2000 to identify specific issues to be taken up for the purpose of preparing the pre-election policy briefs. The paper provides suggestions to improve the capacity of civil society to contribute to the policy debate and to formulate ideas for the national political process in the run-up to, and immediately after, the parliamentary elections due in 2001.Election, Policy Briefs, Bangladeshg

State of the Bangladesh Economy and Budget Responses 2008

Budget, Bangladesh

Corporate Responsibility Practices in Bangladesh: Results from a Benchmark Study

This paper aims to provide useful insights in understanding the overall corporate responsibility status in the corporate world of Bangladesh as well as to obtain perception of the relationship of corporations with civil society, workers and the consumers. The study, thereby, recognises the valuable views of the representatives of the civil society organisations on issues such as labour rights, community relations, workplace environment and sustainable development. A set of policy recommendations for addressing the major concerns of corporate responsibility has also been sketched out in the paper.Business Administration, Corporate responsibility, Bangladesh

Contested Compliance Regimes in Global Production Networks: Insights from the Bangladesh Garment Industry

This article reports the findings of a field study on the emergence of collective agreements led by global brands enacting compliance measures to improve safety and working conditions in the Bangladesh garment industry. We explore how key actors in the Bangladesh garment sector who constitute the local production system of the global supply chain experienced the implementation of global agreements on factory safety. We argue that global safety compliance measures through multi-stakeholder initiatives provide legitimacy to multinational corporations and their global brands but do little to address the structural problems arising from exploitative pricing and procurement practices, which are the key reasons for deplorable working conditions in garment factories. Our findings indicate that neoliberal development policies of the state, where local economies are incorporated into global production networks, resulted in differential treatment and regulation of specific populations that comprise garment factory workers. The reconfiguration of state power to meet the demands of global supply chains also involved use of state violence to suppress dissent while undermining labour rights and working conditions. Our article contributes to the politicization of multinational corporations in global production chains by showing how contestations between workers, factory owners, the state, trade unions and multinational corporations create new private forms of governance and new regimes of compliance in the industr

Transnational labor regulation, reification and commodification: A critical review

Why does scholarship on transnational labor regulation (TLR) consistently fails to search for improvements in working conditions, and instead devotes itself to relentless efforts for identifying administrative processes, semantics, and amalgamations of stakeholders? This article critiques TLR from a pro-worker perspective, through the philosophical work of Georg Lukács, and the concepts of reification and commodification. A set of theoretically grounded criteria is developed and these are applied against selected contemporary cases of TLR. In the totality that is capitalism, reification of social relations of production conceals completely the experiences of workers. In TLR, managerialist and process-oriented scholarship is dominant, verifiable outcomes and positive improvements in conditions of employment are not sought, and worse, meaningless procedures are celebrated as positive achievements

Socioeconomic vulnerability and adaptation to environmental risk: A case study of climate change and flooding in Bangladesh

In this article we investigate the complex relationship between environmental risk, poverty, and vulnerability in a case study carried out in one of the poorest and most flood-prone countries in the world, focusing on household and community vulnerability and adaptive coping mechanisms. Based upon the steadily growing amount of literature in this field we develop and test our own analytical model. In a large-scale household survey carried out in southeast Bangladesh, we ask almost 700 floodplain residents living without any flood protection along the River Meghna about their flood risk exposure, flood problems, flood damage, and coping mechanisms. Novel in our study is the explicit testing of the effectiveness of adaptive coping strategies to reduce flood damage costs. We show that, households with lower income and less access to productive natural assets face higher exposure to risk of flooding. Disparity in income and asset distribution at community level furthermore tends to be higher at higher risk exposure levels, implying that individually vulnerable households are also collectively more vulnerable. Regarding the identification of coping mechanisms to deal with flood events, we look at both the ex ante household level preparedness for flood events and the ex post availability of community-level support and disaster relief. We find somewhat paradoxically that the people that face the highest risk of flooding are the least well prepared, both in terms of household-level ex ante preparedness and community-level ex post flood relief. © 2007 Society for Risk Analysis

Start2quit: a randomised clinical controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of using personal tailored risk information and taster sessions to increase the uptake of the NHS Stop Smoking Services.

BACKGROUND: The NHS Stop Smoking Services (SSSs) offer help to smokers who want to quit. However, the proportion of smokers attending the SSSs is low and current figures show a continuing downward trend. This research addressed the problem of how to motivate more smokers to accept help to quit. OBJECTIVES: To assess the relative effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness, of an intervention consisting of proactive recruitment by a brief computer-tailored personal risk letter and an invitation to a 'Come and Try it' taster session to provide information about the SSSs, compared with a standard generic letter advertising the service, in terms of attendance at the SSSs of at least one session and validated 7-day point prevalent abstinence at the 6-month follow-up. DESIGN: Randomised controlled trial of a complex intervention with follow-up 6 months after the date of randomisation. SETTING: SSSs and general practices in England. PARTICIPANTS: All smokers aged ≥ 16 years identified from medical records in participating practices who were motivated to quit and who had not attended the SSS in the previous 12 months. Participants were randomised in the ratio 3 : 2 (intervention to control) by a computer program. INTERVENTIONS: Intervention - brief personalised and tailored letter sent from the general practitioner using information obtained from the screening questionnaire and from medical records, and an invitation to attend a taster session, run by the local SSS. Control - standard generic letter from the general practice advertising the local SSS and the therapies available, and asking the smoker to contact the service to make an appointment. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: (1) Proportion of people attending the first session of a 6-week course over a period of 6 months from the receipt of the invitation letter, measured by records of attendance at the SSSs; (2) 7-day point prevalent abstinence at the 6-month follow-up, validated by salivary cotinine analysis; and (3) cost-effectiveness of the intervention. RESULTS: Eighteen SSSs and 99 practices within the SSS areas participated; 4384 participants were randomised to the intervention (n = 2636) or control (n = 1748). One participant withdrew and 4383 were analysed. The proportion of people attending the first session of a SSS course was significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group [17.4% vs. 9.0%; unadjusted odds ratio (OR) 2.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.75 to 2.57; p  86% over a lifetime horizon. LIMITATIONS: Participating SSSs may not be representative of all SSSs in England. Recruitment was low, at 4%. CONCLUSIONS: The Start2quit trial added to evidence that a proactive approach with an intensive intervention to deliver personalised risk information and offer a no-commitment introductory session can be successful in reaching more smokers and increasing the uptake of the SSS and quit rates. The intervention appears less likely to be cost-effective in the short term, but is highly likely to be cost-effective over a lifetime horizon. FUTURE WORK: Further research could assess the separate effects of these components. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN76561916. FUNDING DETAILS: This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 21, No. 3. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information

Proposals for the National Budget 2009-10

The national budget for the fiscal year 2009-2010 will be an important event on a number of counts, particularly in the current national and global contexts. From the national perspective, it will be the first one by the newly-elected government. Arguably, it will be inspired by the election manifesto of the leading party of the ruling coalition. It is expected that the upcoming budget will accord allocations to a select set of commitments made by Awami League during the run-up to the elections.Bangladesh, National Budget