ALM UNDP

Summary:

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) are prepared by the member countries through a participatory process involving domestic stakeholders as well as external development partners, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Updated every three years with annual progress reports, PRSPs describe the country's macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programs over a three year or longer horizon to promote broad-based growth and reduce poverty, as well as associated external financing needs and major sources of financing. Interim PRSPs (I-PRSPs) summarize the current knowledge and analysis of a country's poverty situation, describe the existing poverty reduction strategy, and lay out the process for producing a fully developed PRSP in a participatory fashion. The country documents, along with the accompanying IMF/World Bank Joint Staff Assessments (JSAs), are being made available on the World Bank and IMF websites by agreement with the member country as a service to users of the World Bank and IMF websites.

According to the Executive Summary found in the PRSP for Bangladesh (November, 2005), Bangladesh has made important gains in the fight against poverty. Derided as a basket-case only three decades ago, Bangladesh today is definitively out of the shadow of famine. Uniquely for a country facing an extremely vulnerable ecology, Bangladesh has established a credible record of sustained growth within a stable macroeconomic framework. At a comparatively low level of development, it has also earned the distinctions of a major decline in population growth rate and of graduating to the medium human development group of countries by UNDP’s ranking.