Samriddhi

Samriddhi Project Document
9. Risk and mitigations measures
Social and political stability in Bangladesh is fragile. The current elected government has been
in power since January 2009 and has already come under pressure at different occasions. As
time passes it is expected that pressure will mount on the current government and it has to be
seen how it will handle this pressure. On the other hand, the present government has been
elected with a large majority, and therefore, the political situation should remain stable for the
time of its mandate. Bureaucracy, corruption and the lack of an appropriate policy framework
linger and hinder development initiatives. It is however expected that policy dialogue with
development partners should mitigate this risk, and that it should not affect the project’s
interventions.
The project depends to a large extent on the support it receives from government staff at
National, District, Upazilla and Union level, especially regarding the development and
introduction of new technologies as well as the regular updating of the local service providers.
With the high turnover and the general resistance to decentralisation among civil servants there
is a risk that the project will not get the required support from government officials. The project
will mitigate this risk by remaining engaged with government officials at different levels by
regularly meeting them and updating them on the project’s plans and progress. From earlier
experience, the level of support and commitment of government servants is higher, when a MoU
is signed between the project and the concerned ministry. Therefore, this strategy will be
continued.
The unwillingness of local government officials and their non-acceptance of community
platforms as the voice of the population, especially on Union level, can negatively affect the
ability of community platforms to advocate the interests of their constituency with local
governments. This hampers the community platforms ability to include their development
priorities into the local governance system and thus the project’s thrust for a more coordinated
and better managed local socio-economic development. This risk will be mitigated on the one
hand through the collaboration with Sharique, and, on the other, by strengthening the capacities
of community platforms and establishing functional linkages with Union Parishad.
Vested political interests, corruption, pressure by syndicates and low ethical standards of
market actors hinder the progress and dynamism of community organisations and MSEs and
cause price fluctuations and high transaction costs. The lack of commitment of the private
sector to contribute to local development may cause less economic growth and influence the
success of value chain and market development activities. The project will mitigate this risk by
consequently analysing the market actors in terms of their capacities and incentives, and
approach them with offers that contain a clear profit improvement for them and for the
producers. It will also strengthen the capacities of CPs and MSEs so that they can claim they
can equitably negotiate with market actors, facilitate linkages between actors, raise their
awareness about the importance of win-win situations, and advocate for an enhanced corporate
social responsibility of big value chain actors.
The legal situation often proves to be a large hurdle to start, organise and improve economic
activities at the community level. The current legislation hinders CBOs to use their own savings
as seed money for loans to extreme poor to start their own economic activities. MSEs face
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