C T Online Desk: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced financial assistance of about $5 billion or 5 billion US dollars to Bangladesh over the next five years.
At the same time, the organization has announced a plan to increase annual assistance to the country by up to 20%.
A high-level delegation led by ADB President Masato Kanda, who is visiting Dhaka on Monday (May 25), met with Prime Minister Tarique Rahman.
The meeting discussed in detail Bangladesh’s development priorities, economic challenges and areas of future cooperation.
ADB’s Dhaka office said in a statement after the meeting that the organization will provide a total of $5 billion in assistance to Bangladesh over the next five years.
In addition, annual loan and assistance flows will be increased in stages.
At this time, loan agreements worth about $1.4 billion were signed under this year’s program.
This includes an additional $250 million in assistance to address regional and global economic impacts, especially the pressures caused by the Middle East crisis.
According to ADB’s plan, the organization’s annual sovereign debt commitment to Bangladesh is currently about $2 billion. The target is to increase this to about $2.4 billion in the medium term.
This will result in an average of about $1 billion in additional financing per year, which will be within the existing support framework.
The ADB said that this financing will play an important role in Bangladesh’s infrastructure development, energy sector, human resource development, and building a climate-resilient economy.
