Planning and Development Research

1.1 Background The Pourashavas are one tiers of urban local government in Bangladesh . There is both cooperation as well as separation of activities between the urban local government and the central government in regards financial management and administration, maintenance of law and order, prevention of law and order, development of infrastructure etc. For the reason, local governments will have to develop a history of generating an annual surplus of revenues over expenditures. So, not only must the local government manage its finances well, they must be able to present well maintained budgeting and accounting records to verify their performance. There are only three ways that a local government can reliably develop a surplus that they can commit to long term debt repayment. They can increase their “own source revenues” as currently defined. They can reduce their expenditures. They can develop new sources of revenue. In Bangladesh , the income of Pourashava depends o

4.1 INTRODUCTION Shrimp culture in Bangladesh started to develop in the early 1970s. At that time there was little local demand and the price of shrimp was consequently very low. The potential of farmed shrimp as a hard currency earner was quickly realized by the private sector (Nuruzzaman, 1993). During this period the shrimp farming industry received little support from the Bangladesh Government. Only since 1980 with the introduction of Second Five-Year Plan (1980-85) has brackish water aquaculture been given official recognition and shrimp began to grow in coastal areas. The department of Fisheries estimated that by the beginning of 1990 more than 115,000 ha had been turned over to shrimp farming activities in the whole Bangladesh. Shrimp farming take place in the district of Satkhira, Khulna, Bagerhat, Barisal, Patuakhali, Bhola, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. The two most important areas lie to the north of Sundarbans (90,000 ha) and in the vicinity of Cox’s Baz