Micro-credit and Poverty Reduction

Bangladesh presents a unique case of under development with high incidence of poverty and unemployment. Although, it has a long rural development history. It is one of the low-income countries. As per Human Development Index (HDI), Bangladesh ranked 140 out of 177 countries in the world in 2007 (UNDP, 2007). Per capita annual income was US$ 520 in 2006-07. The value of Gini Coefficient of household income increased from 0.43 in 1995 to 0.47 in 1997 indicating increased trend of income inequality. Household income distribution shows that the bottom 10 percent households possessed only two per cent of the total income while the top 10 per cent households possessed about 40 per cent of the total income. The real GDP growth rate was about 6.5 per cent in 2006-07. Agriculture contributes about onefifth to the total GDP. Population living below poverty line estimated through cost of basic need approach was about 40 per cent, 43.8 per cent in rural area and 28.4 per cent in urban area in 2005. Life expectancy at birth increased from 58.7 years in 1995 to 65.1 years in 2004 with declining gender disparity due to mainly reduced infant and maternal mortality (BBS, 2007 in Biswas, 2008).