Social safety net budget deserves higher share

The need for higher allocation for the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) has never been felt so badly than during the ongoing pandemic. Historically, given the resource constraint, Bangladesh could not manage to allocate the required amount of resources for SSNPs compared to other regions of the world. In South Asian countries, the average allocation for SSNPs is about 4 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP). The East Asian and Pacific countries spend about 8 percent of GDP on SSNPs while the European countries allocate about 20 percent of their GDP on social protection.