$200m special ADB help for budgetary support

Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Thursday said the ADB will provide US$ 200 million to Bangladesh under the next fiscal ‘as special budgetary support’ to pull the economy out of the impact of the global recession.
It will be in addition to existing budgetary support programmes to be funded under different projects and development schemes during fiscal 2009-10, he said.
The finance minister made the disclosure at a press conference held on Thursday afternoon at his secretariat office on return from the Asian Development Bank’s annual conference in the Indonesian resort town of Bali from May 4-5. He led a four-member delegation to the conference.
Muhith said the ADB’s this year’s annual conference was special in many respects.
Its board of governors agreed to set up a special fund of US$ 3.4 billion to support member states efforts to bail out their economy from the impact of global economic meltdown.
They have also agreed to expand the Bank’s capital base by three times. He said the decision to this effect has been taken with a view to increasing the loan portfolio activities to members requiring increased support to carry out development activities.
The finance minister said he noticed from the statements of ADB finance ministers attending the conference that the nature of the stimulus package that they have introduced in their economies is almost the same.
He said most finance ministers also sounded the views that the recessionary impact on the global economy may come to an end by the year 2011.
Muhith further said the additional support money, that is the US$ 200 million which Dhaka will receive under the next fiscal will be available to the government by December 2009.
This money will be used to strengthen government efforts to create more jobs and income generating activities, promote infrastructures, rescue domestic industry from falling sick from the impact of global economic recession and expand social safetynet to the poor.
The entire focus will be on developing a vibrant economy to generate more demand and create the supply response to expand the area of the country’s economic activities and its service sector.
This is how Bangladesh is planning to shun the impact of recession, he said.

Courtesy of The New Nation