COVID-19 leads over half of Bangladesh's poor people into poverty in 2022

DHAKA, May 17 (Xinhua) -- The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed 51 percent of the Bangladeshi poor people into poverty in 2022, said the country's leading think tank Wednesday.

According to a survey by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), an autonomous multi-disciplinary public research organization in Bangladesh, urban chronic poverty is still at a considerable level even in a growing megacity like Bangladesh's capital Dhaka.

The BIDS revealed the information at the BIDS Research Almanac 2023 in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Binayak Sen, director general of the BIDS, said the vulnerability of people should be kept in mind in order to ensure that development is sustainable.

He said evidence shows that a new social category is emerging as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the economy of the country.

He added that about one-tenth of the urban population belonged to this category.

Experts here said earlier that 50 years of Bangladesh's success in poverty alleviation disappeared as at least 20 million people fell below the poverty line during the pandemic.

They said that a significant share of 40 million people engaged in informal employment lost their jobs due to the pandemic and price hike of essentials amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.