Inflation choking mid-income people: Sanem

Mid-income families, especially lower middle-income groups, are suffering for persistent high inflation, said South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (Sanem) today.

"Many people belonging to the middle-class families saw their income declined because of job losses. The ongoing high inflation has put them in trouble," said Bazlul Haque Khondker, chairman of the Sanem.

But we cannot give any support to these group of people of our society, he said at a webinar on "Social Safety Net Programmes: Where Bangladesh stands", organised by SANEM.

"Even in a country like Malaysia, it has been seen that the middle-class people, suffered more than the poor during the coronavirus pandemic.

They faced difficulties as their incomes dipped suddenly," he said adding that many middle-class families do not have high amount of savings or have insurance protection.

They cannot stand in the queue for buying commodities at subsidized prices from Open Market Sales (OMS) trucks, he added.

He said social insurance could be a great savior. "Unfortunately, we do not have that in our country."