Improving the effects of Public Private Partnerships on ultra poor households in Bangladesh

Poverty is a particularly severe in Bangladesh. To achieve the national development goals and especially to reduce poverty, the government of Bangladesh has started to experiment with cooperative approaches that involve the private sector and NGOs. Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been introduced as one of these novel approaches and the Income Generating Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD) is one important PPP arrangement under the Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNP) in Bangladesh. This paper reports on the effectiveness of the IGVGD programme using information obtained from a survey of 66 IGVGD households from 15 Unions of 5 Districts. The survey results show households making only an insignificant improvement in income levels and no significant development in the acquisition of new assets as a result of the IGVGD programme. Also 9 government officials, 4 NGO executives, 9 field level informants and 10 IGVGD beneficiaries were interviewed as part of the study. They provided suggestions on how to improve the effectiveness of the IGVGD partnership programmes that cover both policy design and implementation aspects. Specifically, it was thought the duration of the IGVGD partnership programme should be longer; the interest rate of NGOs’ loans should be reduced; NGOs should provide timely training for Income Generation Activities (IGA) and should link IGVGD participants with their regular credit programme; and finally the procedure for selection the IGVGD participants should be corruption free.