Bangladesh is likely to request for $500 million more from the World Bank on the grounds of budgetary support during its upcoming IMF-WB spring meeting in Washington.
Additional support may also be sought from the global lender, in the form of a $93 billion three-year IDA-20 package, to be implemented in the upcoming fiscal years FY23, FY24 and FY25, officials said recently.
As there was no concrete assurance from the World Bank regarding the $500 million request earlier, the topic will be raised at the upcoming spring meeting, said a senior Economic Relations Division official.
The UN development financier last December announced a $93 billion replenishment package of the International Development Association (IDA) to help low-income countries respond to the Covid-19 crisis and build "a greener, more resilient, and inclusive future."
In the last IDA-19 aid package, Bangladesh had received confirmation of some $4.2 billion worth of assistance, the ERD official said.
A Bangladesh delegation, headed by Bangladesh Bank governor Fazle Kabir, will join the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank (WB) spring meeting at Washington, DC in the United States on April 18-24 later this month.
"Since the $93 billion IDA-20 aid package would focus on climate-change victims and Covid-19 recovery programmes, we would seek $500 million more in budget support on climate change in addition to the ongoing budgetary support the global lender has already assured," the ERD official also said.
Recently, the World Bank board approved $250 million worth of budgetary support for Bangladesh as the Development Policy Credit (DPC) for coronavirus resilience and restoration program.
Another amount of $250 million DPC is expected to be provided in the next FY23 for Covid-19 resilience and restoration program, he further said.
The government needs more investments in infrastructure-development works where the WB could come forward with an extended package, he added.
According to the World Bank statistics, they confirmed $2.12 billion worth of assistance for bankrolling the country's development recipe in FY21.
In the current FY22, WB has so far confirmed $1.40 billion worth of aid to Bangladesh, the country which is in the process of graduating from the LDC status and makes ambitious budgets annually-this time sights set on an around Tk700,000 crore outlay for the next fiscal.
The country's current 2021-22 budget size is over Tk603,681 crore, in line with the budgeting crescendo despite the pandemic setbacks.