World Bank’s commitment of aid to Bangladesh reduces 25 percent
It also committed to provide aid support to strengthen Bangladesh’s local government and digitisation.
The World Bank reduced its commitment of aid support to Bangladesh in the fiscal year 2018-19 by over 25 percent than that in the previous fiscal.
The multinational lending agency approved the country a support of about $2.24 billion in the last fiscal year ended on June 30 this year, around $754 million less than that in 2017-18, said the recently published annual report of the World Bank.
The World Bank committed to provide $250 million in 2018-19 for "Jobs Programmatic Development Policy Project in Bangladesh" to address job challenges and strengthen systems to protect workers and build resilience.
The lender made another commitment to provide Bangladesh with $175 million for "Sustainable Forests and Livelihoods Project" to improve forest management.
It also committed to provide aid support to strengthen Bangladesh's local government and digitisation.
The report said all the five institutes of the World Bank Group reduced its commitment to support and operations to all member countries in the last fiscal by about 6.77 percent on an average, although it raised disbursement by about eight percent.
Last fiscal, the agency's commitment to support globally reduced by $4.53 billion to $66.87 billion from the previous fiscal's, while the disbursement increased by $3.67 billion to $49.40 billion during the same period.
According to the report, the lender slightly raised its commitment through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) – the window for providing loans with a higher interest rate.
It however reduced the commitment by 8.65 percent through the International Development Association (IDA) – the window for concessional loans and grants.
In 2018-19, the IDA approved total support of $21.93 billion for lower and lower middle income countries in the world, $2.08 billion less than that in the previous fiscal.
The IRBD committed $23.19 billion to upper and upper middle income countries, which was around $189 million more than the approval in the previous fiscal.
The report said Ethiopia topped the list of IDA assistance recipients by securing $2.61 billion of commitment, followed by Bangladesh ($2.24 billion), Pakistan ($1.22 billion), Kenya ($1.06 billion) and Ivory Coast ($1.05 billion).
World Bank officials said the IDA allocated more than $4 billion to Bangladesh under its current loan package (IDA-18) for three fiscal years (fiscal 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20).
Mehrin Ahmed Mahbub, senior communications officer of the World Bank posted at the Dhaka office, said the global lender approved around $5.23 billion to Bangladesh, much above the commitment.
The grants included $2.4 billion to help Bangladesh mitigate the Rohingya crisis, she said.
"The World Bank provided Bangladesh, under the current package, with more grants than it originally committed for. It gave the additional loan amount to the country from other countries' unutilised funds," she explained.
The World Bank's annual report said that the global lending group, in the fiscal 2018-19, provided total $62.3 billion in support to its member countries in the forms of loans, grants, equity investments and guarantees.
The Sub-Saharan Africa region received highest, followed by South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, East Asia and Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa.