Agencies working to attain the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Bangladesh are facing five major challenges, Muhammad Muslim Chowdhury, finance division secretary, said recently.
Unavailable data, lack of development capacity, absence of ownership among the implementing agencies, policy gap, and implementation gap are major challenges to implement the SDGs, he said.
He was giving a presentation at a session of a three-day “National conference on SDG implementation review” organized by General Economic Division (GED) under the Planning Commission in the capital's Bangabandhu International Conference Centre.
Some 26.14 percent of the information relating to 241 indicators of SDGs is not available with Bangladesh, according to a study by the GED released in January this year.
The report said data availability would be a daunting challenge as merely 29 percent data was readily available in the existing system and 26 percent data is not at all available.
The GED study revealed that data related to 70 indicators was readily available in the existing system, while data related to 63 indicators is not available at present. Some 108 units of data are partially available.
Bangladesh would need $928 billion in additional investment till 2030 to achieve the SDG's targets.
It will also require $2 billion to $6.91 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) per year to fill the investment gap to attain the target of SDGs.
