BB doubles its Green project fund to Tk400cr

The central bank has increased the size of the refinancing scheme of the environment friendly project from Tk200 crore to Tk400 crore. 

But Bangladesh Bank has also reduced the interest of the refinance facilities by 1 percentage point. So banks can now finance at a maximum of 8 percent interest from this scheme. 

On Sunday the Sustainable Finance Department of the Bangladesh Bank issued a composite circular in this regard. 

Khondkar Morshed Millat, general manager of the department told The Business  Standard, "We have tried to include all required instructions on this master circular. Here the fund size has been increased and the loan limit has also been increased. Four new green products have been included in this refinance scheme"

In the new instruction, the equity and loan ratio will be 20:80. That means that if a green project wants to avail a Tk100 loan, it has to have a minimum equity of Tk20. 

Now a single project can avail a maximum Tk50 crore from this fund. 

In 2017 the central bank formed this local currency fund to refinance green projects with low interest to encourage projects to help save the environment from the effects of climate change.

The central bank also has another two foreign currency refinance schemes for environment friendly projects. One of these is a $200 million fund and the other is a 200 million Euro fund.