The rolling political turmoil has led the government to cancel a meeting of Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF), a platform of foreign donors, with fixing no fresh date.
The meeting, which is considered vital one as its main objective is to set strategy for giving financial commitment on Bangladesh much-needed infrastructure development, was scheduled for April 26-27 next after a break of five years.
This is the third time the meeting was postponed since November 2011 when the first meeting was set but canceled later on due to souring relation developed between the government and the World Bank over the alleged Padma Bridge corruption issue.
“The latest scheduled meeting was also canceled as some development partners including USAID and the European Union (EU), showed their unwillingness to hold the meeting amid political uncertainty,” said an official at the Economic Relation Division.
“The fresh date is yet to be fixed.”
The government, however, officially did not mention any reason for canceling the scheduled BDF meeting.
The second meeting was set in early 2012 but did not take place due to continued strain relations between the World Bank and government over the alleged corruption conspiracy in Padma Bridge construction, the largest infrastructure project in Bangladesh.
After Padma Bridge corruption controversy, the government had made its effort to sew up the relation with the leading donors but the effort went in vein after the disputed January 5 national election held last year, sources said.
The last meting of the Forum was held in Dhaka on February 15-16 in 2010.
The postponement of the meeting has put a damper on the government’s implementation of the Seventh Five Year Plan (2015-2020), which was the main point for discussion at the BDF meeting where the development partners were supposed to be briefed about the plan.
The meeting was also supposed to iron out the ways for the sustainable social and economic development adopted in the Plan to achieve a middle- income country by 2021.
The strategies for improving efficiency in the development programmes and its management were also supposed to be consulted with the development partners.
Usually, Bangladesh seeks necessary financial support and cooperation from the BDF that bankrolls Bangladesh’s development programmes.
The country needs financial support from the development partners in taking the double-digit economic growth and reducing poverty to 10% by 2021 in line with the government’s millennium development goal.
At the last BDF parley held five years ago, issues like development strategies, governance and human development, energy and power, agriculture, food security and water resources, environment and climate change had been discussed in different working sessions.
