Prabriddhi – Desarrollo Económico Local (LED)

Local Economic Development is the capacity of an urban or rural territory to create a competitive advantage for its enterprises through a broad set of activities and improve the economic well-being of its people and workers.

Bangladesh’s economy has been steadily growing over the last three decades with GDP growth rates above 5% over the last 10 years. Not all regions of Bangladesh however were able to benefit to the same extent from the economic transformation brought by this impressive GDP growth. As decentralization remains an important element of the 7th Five Year Plan (FYP) of the government, new approaches such as Local Economic Development (LED) have entered the sphere of the local government mission. The 7th FYP recognizes that the rural development contributes significantly to the economic development of the whole country and supports Bangladesh’s ambition to reach the status of “middle-income” country. In recent years, established and democratically elected Local Government Institutions (LGIs) at union, upazilla and municipal levels have gained weight in national debates on local governance and decentralization. This will support and renew the decentralization process.

Prabriddhi focuses on building the capacity of an urban or rural territory to create a competitive advantage for its enterprises through a broad set of activities and improve the economic well-being of its people and workers. Prabriddhi is essentially participatory short-term planning, bottom-up designed, owned and delivered, relying on public-private collaboration with an iterative, transparent and open-ended process.

El proyecto

Prabriddhi is funded by SDC and implemented by Swisscontact has started an 18-month long pilot or inception phase in August 2018 in two selected municipalities of Bangladesh, Jashore and Shibganj.

1. Build capacity of municipality level institutions and test the feasibility of the LED process through municipalities;
2. Based on the pilot experiences, design a scale up phase of the project with a national level anchor.

Resultados

• The Bangladeshi version of LED model is tested in the pilot municipalities by building the capacity of the local stakeholders and co-implementing 13 quick win activities with them.
• The pilot municipalities and other relevant stakeholders are engaging in the implementation of LED activities by contributing their time, effort, ideas, and funds.
• 2000 mango farmers of Shibganj enjoyed net additional income of BDT 28 million or CHF 337 thousand because of the improved business opportunities created through the LED initiatives
• Additional source of revenue is created for Shibganj municipality through digitization of the trade license service.