Bangladesh Housing Report

This document is about Bangladesh’s economy, demography, social indicators, and overview of the housing sector. Bangladesh is a riparian, agrarian country severely constrained by the shortage of high land required for economic activities. A small country of 144,000 sq. km, having a population of 154 million, divided into 133,910 sq. km of land and 10,090 sq. km of water, is also greatly affected by vagaries of weather. Even with these natural constraints, and some other issues like political instability, the country has of late shown quite visible and impressive progress in the economic field. Since Bangladesh comprises 80% of the rural population, and 50% of its GDP comes from this sector, it put obvious emphasis on rural development. Major functions of the rural development agencies include employment and income generation, provision of credit and institutional support to rural target groups, vulnerable group development, formation of rural cooperatives, provision of health care, sanitation, safe drinking water, education etc. Alongside the public sector, the NGOs also play a key-role in rural development efforts. Organizations like the Grameen Bank and BRAC have earned world-wide acclaim in the field.