Disbursement of foreign loans and grants increased slightly to US$ 175.95 million in July, the first month of the current fiscal year, compared with that of the same month of last year, according to the latest statistics of Economic Resources Division. In July last year, international lenders and development partners had disbursed US$ 171.35 million, the data showed. For FY 2014-15, lenders and donors made fresh commitments to provide Bangladesh a total of US$ 143 million whereas there were no commitments in the same month of last year, officials of the ERD said.
They said that the amount of commitments and disbursement usually remained lower in the first month of the fiscal year because of slow progress of implementation of the annual development programme by the
government’s project implementing ministries and agencies.
According to the data, during the period foreign lenders and donors disbursed US$ 167.39 million in
loans and US$ 8.59 million in grants.
In the same month of the FY 2013-14, the lenders had disbursed US$ 117.32 million in loans and US$ 17.69 million in grants.
The ERD data showed that the government in July repaid US$ 87.91 million as principal and interest for loans of previous years. Of the amount, US$ 68.39 million was repaid as principal and US$ 19.58 million as interests.
In July 2013, the repaid amount was US$ 79.11million including US$ 61.42 million as principal and US$ 17.69 as interests.
Out of the released amount, the Asian Development Bank released US$ 57.36 million, World Bank US$ 44.72 million and Japan US$ 37.48 million, the data showed.
-With New Age input
