Bangladesh is holding talks with Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to get finance for nine of the country’s fast-track projects.
The projects include Padma Bridge, MRT-6, Ruppur Nuclear Power Plant, Sonadia Deep Seaport, LNG Terminal, Matarbari Power Plant, Rampal Power Plant and Paira Port.
“The decision will be taken in the bank’s board meeting in January,” AIIB President Jin Liqun was quoted to have told Finance Minister AMA Muhith.
Muhith was speaking at a press briefing after the first day of Bangladesh Development Forum meeting at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the capital yesterday.
In his written speech presented at the event, the minister said in the new phase of economic development of the country much greater importance has been assumed by transformational projects whose financing is the biggest challenge for the next few years.
The finance minister had been briefing the journalists on the outcome of the first-day meeting of Bangladesh Development Form yesterday.
Highlighting the socioeconomic situation in Bangladesh, he said the biggest problem in the country is poverty and highly underdeveloped physical infrastructure.
At the moment, the poverty rate is 24.8% while the extreme poverty rate is 12.9%, he said, adding that the gross domestic investment rate is 28.97% in which public share is 6.9%.
“A noteworthy but disturbing feature is that private investment has not been able to keep pace with the growth in overall investment.”
“We plan to increase the rate of our growth to 8% by 2020. This is planned to bring down poverty rate to 18.6% and extreme poverty to 8.9%. This calls for added efforts for the development partners in keeping with our planned accelerated efforts,” he said.
Muhith said these goals are necessary to accelerate investment, of which the target is Tk31,902 billion, equivalent to about $400 billion.
“This will demand a Herculean effort in domestic resource mobilisation as also development effectiveness.”
The finance minister said annual performance agreement has been devised by all ministries in order to emphasise implementation of development programmers.
“We have at the same time reformed the right to information regime to improve transparency and accountability and thus ultimately the quality of governance.”
“I can assure you that political commitment could not be any stronger than it is now,” he said.
Inviting foreign donors to finance the projects under Seventh Five Year Plan that will begin from next year, Muhith said the Plan urges all development partners to align their country assistance strategies with the goals and sectoral targets of the government.
“Under the 7th FYP, the investment requirements will sharply increase to finance a more rapid pace of GDP growth,” he hoped.
The minister said the increased requirements of foreign resources, especially investment, will pose a challenge for Bangladesh during the Seventh Five Year Plan and beyond.
“We hope that we will get our development partners on our side as before to overcome those challenges and to make our journey from lower to higher middle-income country possible.”