Finance Minister urges WB to give project loans under budget support

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Sunday called upon the World Bank to extend loans against projects under budget support to ensure speedy implementation of development schemes.

Minister made the request in a meeting between the Bangladesh delegation and the World Bank delegation held today at a city hotel.

Mustafa Kamal led the Bangladesh delegation while World Bank Vice President for South Asian region Hartwig Schafer led the World Bank delegation.

The Finance Minister said in case of availing foreign funding against development projects under the existing tradition, it is often seen that the projects remained not prepared while there is slow pace in project formulation and implementation.

To overcome this slow pace, Kamal requested the World Bank to extend loans in projects under budget support so that necessary fund is made available for the priority projects of the government and thus the project implementation gets pace.

Referring to his earlier call to the World Bank to undertake a flagship project to make Dhaka as a scenic city and also simplify its communication system, the World Bank vice president assured that there is considerable progress in this regard and hopefully good news will come soon.

The Finance Minister also requested the World Bank delegation to speedily release the $500 million budget support against the Programmatic Recovery and Resilience Development Policy Credit (DPC) project to keep operative the affected labour market, financial and social sectors from the shock of the pandemic.

Kamal requested the World Bank delegation to approve loans for Bangladesh in a speedy manner considering the population size of the country side by side stressed the need for forging stronger cooperation with the lending agency in addressing the existing problems in project implementation.

National Board of Revenue (NBR) Chairman Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem, Finance Division Senior Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder, Financial Institutions Division Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Salim Ullah and Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Fatima Yasmin attended the meeting as members of the Bangladesh delegation.

World Bank country director for Bangladesh Mercy Tembon also attended the meeting on behalf of the World Bank delegation, said a press release.BSS.

MSH