Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal Thursday inaugurated the disbursement of Taka 127 crore as financial incentives on behalf of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina among 2.55 lakh poor and extremely poor people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taka 5000 each was disbursed directly to the mobile numbers of the beneficiaries.
The financial incentive was disbursed under the Resilience, Entrepreneurship and Livelihood Improvement (RELI) Project of the Social Development Foundation (SDF), an autonomous “not-for-profit” Trust under the Ministry of Finance, said a press release.
The $340 million equivalent to Taka 2,900 crore RELI project is being implemented with the allocation by the government of Bangladesh and the World Bank to improve the livelihoods of the poor and extreme poor, enhance their resilience and support rural entrepreneurship.
Inaugurating disbursement of financial incentives, the Finance Minister said that the government of Sheikh Hasina has been working relentlessly to bring the poor and extremely poor people, who suffered financial crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic, in the mainstream development process.
He said that the financial incentives would help boosting the financial activities among the rural people which would contribute to the national economy.
Chaired by former Senior Secretary of the government of Bangladesh and the Chairperson of SDF Md. Abdus Samad, the financial incentive disbursement program was also attended by Sheikh Mohammad Salim Ullah, Secretary, Financial Institutions Division as special guest. AZM Sakhawat Hossain, Managing Director, SDF gave the welcome address.
The Secretary, Financial Institutions Division called upon the incentive recipients to ensure the best use of this support for improving their livelihood.
The five-year project RELI, commenced in October 2021, aims to improve the livelihoods of the poor and extreme poor, enhance their resilience and support rural entrepreneurship in project areas by reaching over 750,000 direct beneficiaries, of which 90 percent are women.
The project covers 3,200 villages in 20 districts and the support comprises one-time additional cash transfer grant to those who have fallen into poverty again because of the ongoing pandemic.
The indicators that have been taken into consideration in granting financial assistance are: (1) which member of the beneficiary family has died or been affected of COVID-19 (2) the income-generating activities of the beneficiary families were stopped or damaged due to COVID-19 (3) extremely poor women-headed family or family with physically challenged member and indigenous families and (4) youths who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19 pandemic and returned to their village from within the country or from abroad etc.
The SDF has been implementing various development programs since its inception in 2001 for the socio-economic development of the rural poor and the extremely poor.
The SDF is implementing development activities at 9,333 villages of 159 upazilas in 35 districts to eliminate poverty, to ensure development of skills and employment through training, ensuring engagement of poor and hardcore poor in income generating activities through providing financial support, help ensuring food security, small-scale rural infrastructure construction and renovation, livelihood improvement of fishers community in the coastal region of the country, provide financial incentive to small and medium scale COVID 19 pandemic affected entrepreneurs for their livelihood improvement and women empowerment.
The total number of direct and indirect beneficiaries of the project implemented and under implementation by SDF is about 83 lakhs. So far, some 16.55 lakh poor and extremely poor families of the project villages have been directly included in the project activities, out of which 95 percent are women.
Around 98 percent women members are taking decisions from the key positions of various executive committees and implementing project activities.
Besides, in order to play a key role in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDF is currently working on achieving 9 of the 18 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help materializing a developed and prosperous country by 2041.
