Bhutan

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions. They embody the deep aspirations and commitment of the global community for significant improvements in the quality of human life.

Bhutan’s MDG Status At a Glance

In Bhutan, achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) stands as a top priority and the Government has shown sustained commitment and progress to realizing the achievement of the Goals. According to the second MDG Progress Report, Bhutan has achieved in halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to sanitation and safe drinking water (target 10) and halving the under-weight under-five children (target 2) and is well on track on achieving the other MDGs by 2015. But the Kingdom cannot be complacent as some of the goals such as gender parity at the tertiary level would be difficult to meet.

MDG Needs Assessment
In June 2006, UNDP initiated and coordinated a UN Country Team (UNCT) support and collaboration with the Royal Government to undertake the MDG Needs Assessment (NA) and Costing Exercise to make national development strategies more MDG based. UNDP together with other UN agencies supported the GNH Commission to undertake this nationally led exercise through the establishment of broadly representative thematic task forces with UNCT representation in each group. As one of the pilot countries to roll out this initiative in 2006, Bhutan received extensive support from the UNDP Regional Centre in Colombo and regional offices and experts of other UN agencies. The MDG NA and Costing exercise was completed in February 2007 and the resulting Bhutan MDG Needs Assessment and Costing Report (2006-2015) published in February 2008.

This joint report of the Royal Government and the UNCT provides a detailed assessment of what the country requires in terms of financial, human and institutional resources and policy reforms to meet the MDGs by 2015. It estimates that Bhutan will need to increase public investment by around USD 2.5 billion between 2006 and 2015 if it is to implement prioritized activities identified by Thematic Task Forces for achieving the MDGs and the Tenth Five Year Plan (2008-2013). The social sector (health and education) targets account for the major chunk of the investment at 46.3% of the total estimated outlay of the needs assessment.

The needs assessment and costing exercise was conducted almost in tandem with the preparation of the Tenth Plan, thereby helping to mainstream the MDGs into the Tenth Plan. The MDG NA and Costing Report is one of the key background documents of the Royal Government for the Tenth Plan Round Table Meeting being held on the 17- 18 of February 2008. Full report (3mb)

MDG Consistent Simple Macro-economic Framework (SMF) and Financing Strategy (FS)

As part of UNDP’s strategy to assist developing countries in mainstreaming MDGs into national development plans, the UNDP Regional Centre in Colombo (RCC) supported SMF has been successfully rolled out in Bhutan since October 2007. The SMF model development for Bhutan is in an advanced state of completion and the capacity building of the National SMF Working Group to use and modify the model as required is in progress. The Bhutan SMF model has already been used by the GNH Commission with support from the RCC to make macro-economic projections for the Tenth Plan. The GNH Commission has confirmed the usefulness of such a FS to help the Government to choose between different financing options for the MDGs and the Tenth Plan as a whole; and also for presenting the plan outlay and its financing options to the new Government soon.