Eighth Five Year Plan (July 2020 - June 2025).

This Eighth Five Year Plan is a nationwide multi-sectoral document aiming at completing the agenda of achieving the social and economic transformation. It centers around 6 core themes, which are (1) rapid recovery from COVID-19 at both health and economic level; (2) GDP growth acceleration, employment generation, and rapid poverty reduction; (3) a broad-based strategy of inclusiveness; (4) a sustainable development pathway that is resilient to disaster and climate change; (5) improvement of critical institutions necessary to lead the economy to Upper Middle Income Country status by 2031; and (6) attaining SDGs targets and mitigating the impact of LDC graduation. As for the poverty reduction, the Plan envisages to have a much stronger focus on job creation, infrastructure supply, credit, and social protection income transfers, a much stronger social protection system nationwide, make the digital/mobile financial services system more effective in achieving financial inclusion of the poor and marginalized groups. As for the social inclusion strategy, the Plan focuses on the gender issue, providing support to organizations that promote women entrepreneurs in informal and formal economy, giving access to finance schemes such as micro-credit, receiving better education, improving child care availability, improving the safety of women’s movements and in the workplace, and getting more support from men and other family members. The Plan aims also to include the ethnic minorities by eliminating all legal and regulatory restrictions to inclusion and building affirmative actions in its social development policies to protect social inclusion. The entire document is heavily focused on the strategy for recovery from COVID-19, at- economic, social, and health levels.
To help eliminate hunger and malnutrition, the need is to (i) adopt and implement food production plans to meet the needs of nutritious, safe, and demand-driven foods; (ii) encourage improvements in farm productivity, supply of inputs, price policy support, water supply, farm credit, and marketing support; (iii) improve child and mother nutrition with a combination of augmented supply of nutritious food in general and through school mid-day meals, through education campaigns, through nutrition counseling in local health clinics, and through expansion of related social security programs; (iv) meet the increasing demand of animal protein by sustainably enhancing production, productivity and value addition of milk, meat and egg.
To make agriculture, fisheries, and forestry more productive and sustainable, the Plan suggests a number of actions in the different sectors, as follows: for Agriculture (i) increase agriculture diversification, also to promote exports; (ii) undertake investments in research and extension to increase crop productivity, especially rice; (iii) support climate-resistant seed and production technology; (iii) invest in water resources to support farm production in drought-prone areas, ensure flood control and water-logging prevention investments, and take steps to prevent river-bank erosions and salinity inroads; (iv) introduce precision agriculture and synchronize farming, reduce the use of physical labor and introduce cost saving farming system through farm mechanization; (v) ensure a more efficient and balanced utilization of land; (vi) encourage more use of surface water for irrigation and reduction of pressure on ground water while expanding irrigation facilities; (vii) promote gradual shifting of high water-consuming crops to low water consuming high value crops; (viii) introduce nanotechnology in agriculture, promote science-led agriculture technology systems, and encourage research and adoption of modern agricultural practices; (ix) introduce organic fertilizer use and organic pest management system; (x) develop seed production, crop management, and pest management; (xi) generate need-based technology and improve livelihood of livestock farmers through adaptive research; (xii) improve veterinary services and animal health. For Fisheries: (i) support sustainable growth in fish and shrimp production and other aquatic resources by managing open-water fisheries resources, exploring blue economy through community participation, and reducing post-harvest loss; (ii) promote aquaculture intensification and species diversification, avoiding water pollution. For Forestry: (i) promote conservation of natural forests, together with reforestation/restoration of degraded state forests; (ii) develop coastal afforestation and creation of a coastal greenbelt; (iii) manage protected areas and protect wildlife.
For the rural poverty reduction, the strategy is to improve the standard of living in rural areas through increased income both by creating non-farm jobs through diversification to non-crop agriculture, fishing, livestock, and dairy and through productivity improvements to raise yields, reduce vulnerability to climate change. The Plan also envisages (i) higher spending on social protection programs for the rural poor and vulnerable population; (ii) rural infrastructure improvement, especially roads and electrification; () strengthening of rural health centers with focus on mother, adolescent child and neo-natal care; () installations of solar panels for small scale irrigation.
More inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems can be enhanced by (i) strengthening agricultural supply chains, increasing commercialization through uses of information and communication technology (ICT), and easing credit facilities for small farmers; (ii) developing agricultural research for promoting export of products through coordination with local and international partner organizations and for sustainable technology innovation; (iii) extending credit facilities to farmers through banks and other financial institutions at a low rate; (iv) expanded digitalization of market access and market linkage activities, establishing e-agricultural marketing.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the Plan encourages (i) sustainable improvements in health sector; (ii) availability of safe drinking water and sanitation; (iii) sustainability in production, consumption and use of energy and mineral resources; (iv) preservation of the natural environment and prevention of degradation, enhancement of the disaster management strategy, as well climate change adaptation and mitigation; (iv) an efficient least-cost power production structure based on (a) an optimal and efficient primary fuel mix; and (b) transmission, and distribution of electricity through further reduction of T&D losses; (v) enhanced generation capacity to match expansion of demand from all segments of the economy so as to ensure supply of unhindered quality power from the grid; (vi) integrating economic progress, environment, climate change and disaster management concerns into planning and budgeting with the goal of attaining sustainable development; (vii) a wide array of environmental fiscal reforms for improving environmental performance; (viii) improved waste management including proper collection, segregation for reuse, recycles and environmentally sound disposal.
As for Governance, the government’s institutional and governance improvement goals will target to attain a developed institutional setup, including (i) strengthen the democratic governance process to ensure participation of all citizens and the sound functioning of all democratic institutions; (ii) strengthen the local government institutions; (iii) strengthen service delivery through implementing online transactions for all public services with simplified application forms; (iv) strengthen the judiciary capacity; (v) enforce the government’s policy of zero tolerance of corruption and strengthen the Anti-Corruption Commission.