The next meeting of the Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF), an important platform for the government of Bangladesh for attracting development partners, is unlikely to be held here during the tenure of the present government.
“The government has almost decided not to go for the BDF meeting by this December,” a high official at the Finance Ministry told UNB.
With just a few months left for the present AL-led Grand Alliance government to complete its term, holding such a high-profile meeting would not be effective because the development partners are looking forward to the upcoming elections and the possible new government where the perspectives might also be changed, the official said.
He said there was an initiative from the government to hold the BDF meeting in April this year, but it could not be held due to the deterioration of law and order situation at that time following the announcement of war crimes trial verdicts.
Contacted, Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Md Abul Kalam Azad told UNB that this is not the right time to hold the BDF meetingas the general election is due in a few months’ time apart from lack of interest to some extent from the development partners.
He said since the BDF meeting was not held in April this year, then it could be held by August or September next, but there have been no good response from the local representatives of the development partners.
The ERD secretary said the BDF is not now the lone forum for attracting the development partners in Bangladesh and holding BDF meeting at such a time might not have been very fruitful for Bangladesh.
“The government now has many forums for discussions and it has been continuously having tri-partite meetings with major development partners like the World Bank, the ADB and JICA to have better outcomes,” he added.
Besides, the government is also having a better cooperation with the Local Consultative Group (LCG) and with the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) in implementing the aided projects.
Md Abul Kalam Azad said that due to the close cooperation between the government of Bangladesh and the development partners, the foreign aid disbursement in recent times witnessed a rise along with its commitments while aid utilisation also fared well due to the overall planning process and implementation strategy of the government. “But,there’re scopes for further improvement.”
The foreign aid flow to Bangladesh was much encouraging during thefirst 11 months (July-May) period of the last fiscal (2012-13) as it totalled $ 2,305.33 million against $ 1,693.62 million during the corresponding period of previous year (2011-12).
Sources at the ERD said one of the main reasons for not holding the BDF meeting in April was the development partners might have considered the tenure of the present government particularly whether it was possible to implement fresh aided development projects within its tenure.
They said in January this year it had been primarily decided at the meeting of Local Consultative Group in Bangladesh that the BDF meeting would be held here in the last week of April after a gap ofover three years.
The government, in collaboration with the development partners, held the last high-level BDF meeting in Dhaka on February 15-16, 2010.
In the last meeting, the development partners suggested that the BDF should be an annual event.
Besides, during the two-day BDF meet in 2010, the development financiers also endorsed the revised Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper(PRSP-II) and pledging bigger doses of financial and technical assistance for Bangladesh’s development.
After that the next meeting could not be held in 2011 following the row between Bangladesh and the World Bank over the corruption allegations in connection with the Padma Bridge, even though the meeting was important for generating foreign development assistance.
Following the schism over the financing for the Padma Bridge, the high-profile meeting of the BDF, which was to be held on November 2-3in 2011 in Dhaka, was deferred.
Later, senior ERD officials indicated that a new date would be announced for the meeting.
Earlier, in November 2005, there was a meeting held in the capital titled ‘PRS Implementation Forum’.
