A new World Bank report has found that social protection expenditure in Bangladesh is the lowest in South Asia.
Besides, many countries in the SA are still far from having robust and resilient social protection systems that can provide adequate and integrated support to help people, especially the poor and vulnerable, cope effectively with life-cycle risks and a plethora of shocks.
The findings have been revealed by the Washington-based WB in its report titled 鈥楻ethinking Social Protection in South Asia: Toward Progressive Universalism鈥� released in the current month.
The WB report said that the average social protection expenditure in the SA was 2.9 per cent of gross domestic product with Bangladesh and Afghanistan spending the least of the GDP on social protection.
The countries spend 2 per cent of the GDP on social protection.
Pakistan spends the most, 4.8 per cent of the GDP, on social protection while Nepal having 3.5 per cent of GDP expenditure is in the second position, the report said.
The Maldives with 2.8 per cent expenditure is in the third position while Sri Lanka is in the fourth position with 2.7 per cent expenditure.
India is ahead of Bangladesh and Afghanistan with about 2.5 per cent spending of the GDP on social protection.
The report, however, said that the spending included expenditure on social assistance, public service pensions, and explicit energy subsidies.
It also said that explicit energy subsidies were the second-largest social protection expenditure category in South Asia and was higher than social assistance spending in many countries in the region.
鈥楽outh Asia鈥檚 explicit energy subsidy spending as a share of GDP is 0.93 per cent,鈥� said the report, adding that this included subsidies on oil, residential natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas, as well as residential electricity.聽
In 2019, Pakistan spent the most, 2.5 per cent of the GDP, on explicit energy subsidies in South Asia, followed by the Maldives (1.2 per cent) Sri Lanka (0.8 per cent), and Bangladesh (0.7).
The WB report said that spending on explicit energy subsidies as a share of the GDP was greater than spending on social assistance in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Spending on public sector pensions also represent a sizable portion of social protection expenditure in South Asia but cover a small and more well-off part of the labour force, added the report.
Bangladesh has 42 social assistance programmes, of which 32 were active as of FY 2020.
Majority of the programmes are small and have limited coverage, with the exception of eight, which are large and comprise the bulk of the country鈥檚 social assistance programmes, said the report, adding that a large share of South Asia鈥檚 poor were not covered by any social assistance.
The WB suggested that the South Asian governments should consider adopting universal social protection as an ultimate strategic objective.
The universal social protection refers to the availability of a needs-based package of services spanning social assistance, social insurance, and labour markets for any citizen.
Successful universal social protection provides equitable access to social protection for all whenever it might be needed throughout the life cycle.
