National WASH Accounts Report
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The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), with technical support from WaterAid Bangladesh, released the groundbreaking 'National WASH Accounts 2020' report, taking a crucial step towards understanding water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) expenditure and investments trends in Bangladesh, and to develop better policies and practices to achieve sustainable development goal (SDG) 6.
The report revealed that in 2020, WASH sector expenditure was BDT 598 billion which is 2.18% of the country's total gross domestic product (GDP). Around BDT 172 billion which is 28% of the total WASH spending was on capital investment for building new water supply, sanitation of hygiene services, including hardware and software costs such as the procurement of pipes or paying for detailed design or associated training. Households spent an average of BDT 11,574 annually for WASH, with BDT 1,502 allocated to water, BDT 1,985 to sanitation, and BDT 8,087 to hygiene. Notably, this represented 4.3% of citizens' annual household income which is around BDT 471 billion in total. The distribution of household WASH expenditure showed that low-income households in both urban and rural areas dedicated a substantial portion of their income to WASH.
