Finance Minister AMA Muhith said the government has no problem with soft-term loan from the green climate fund although there is an agreement among the developed nations to provide the fund as grants.
“I don’t have any objection if it’s a soft-term loan,” he said at a workshop yesterday, adding “With my experience in public service for nearly 60 years, I know 50% of this loan is spent on financing and planning.”
Muhith said it would be quite enough for the country if it got $100m even as soft loan for adaptation to the climate change effects.
He said despite the fact that Bangladesh is hardly responsible for carbon emissions, it’s one of the worst victims of the climate change. He said, “Bangladesh suffers most because of others’ activities.”
Muhith alleged, “Funds have been created since the Copenhagen climate summit, but access to those funds is extremely difficult and cumbersome… we should find out ways and gain capacity to be able to have access to the funds.”
The workshop titled “Accessing green climate fund: opportunities, options and challenges for private sector and civil society organizations” was organised by the Economic Relations Division.
Officials said the workshop was a part of the efforts preparing Bangladesh to have access to the green climate fund (GCF).
A multi-billion dollar fund set up by the United Nations in 2010 to help poor countries tackle climate change on November 6 approved $168m for funding different projects in developing countries ahead of a global climate summit starting on Nov 30 in Paris.
The GCF will be one of the main channels for donor countries to mobilise over $100bn a year in aid for developing nations by 2020 from public and private sources.
Muhith expected the countries affected by climate change might have agreements in Paris which would be legally binding.
“We should have some legally binding agreements in Paris that will be the basics for survival of the world, not for the survival of a few countries as the warming of the Earth has gone to a very dangerous level.”
Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu said developing countries which are already facing bad effects of climate change cannot realise their due shares from the GCF for lack of institutional capacity.
“If we can improve our institutional capacity, it won’t be a problem to get enough grants or loans from the climate funds.”
Amu said Bangladesh can use money from climate fund in the SME sector by enhancing its institutional capacity and making the sector environment-friendly.
He said the government is bearing 78% of the cost to implement different projects in the country to mitigate the climate change risks, while the development partners are providing only the remaining 22%.