ADB always stand beside Bangladesh

ADB Vice President

Industry Desk:Vice President (operations 1) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Shixin Chen said that like in the past, the lending agency would always stand beside Bangladesh in its development strides.
“ADB has supported Bangladesh from the very beginning in making social and economic recovery of the country from the impacts of the COVID-pandemic,” he said.
Chen said this during a virtual meeting with Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday, said a Finance Ministry press release.
The Finance Minister extended his thanks to the ADB Vice President for supporting Bangladesh in a prompt manner to overcome the adverse impacts of the COVID-19.
He mentioned that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been working relentlessly with her able and firm leadership to turn Bangladesh into a developed and prosperous country by 2041 to materialize the dream of building “Sonar Bangla” as dreamt by Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Kamal mentioned that the Premier has already announced stimulus packages worth $15.11 billion to overcome the shocks from the pandemic. As being one of the major development partners of Bangladesh, the ADB has so far extended $27.5 billion support to Bangladesh. After the pandemic hit the country, the Manila-based lending agency has come up with $500 million budget support, $250 million policy support, $100 million in the health sector against the COVID-19 Response Emergency Assistance, $9.34 million as grant assistance to face the COVID-19 and $940 million for procuring the vaccines.
The Finance Minister thanked the ADB Vice President for extending all these support while both of them stressed the need for continuing with such partnership to attain the desired goals of development.
ADB mainly supports Bangladesh in power, energy, transport, education, local government, agriculture, water resources, good governance, financial and private sector.
Senior Secretary of the Finance Division Abdur Rouf Talukder, Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Fatima Yasmin, ADB Country Director Manmohan Parkash and other high officials of the Ministry of Finance and ADB joined the meeting virtually.
Meanwhile, the Finance Minister had another virtual meeting today with the president of New Development Bank (NDB) Marcos Troyjo.
Highlighting the unprecedented development of Bangladesh in different fields over the last one era under the able leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Kamal said that the demand for foreign assistance is increasing for Bangladesh day by day in line with the growing development activities.
In this connection, he mentioned that the attainment of membership of NDB by Bangladesh would be beneficial for both the Bank and the country.
Kamal noted that the financing from the NDB would play an important role to turn Bangladesh as a happy and prosperous country by 2041.
The Finance Minister also thanked Marcos for taking speedy measures for attaining the membership of NDB.
Terming the recent developments achieved by Bangladesh as “excellent”, the NDB President assured the Finance Minister of standing beside Bangladesh in fulfilling the development goals.
NDB is a multilateral bank formed with the initiatives of the BRICS countries like Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa and the bank extends support in various development sectors including in physical and social infrastructures.
After its inception, the NDB has extended more than $30 billion support to its member countries over the period of more than 5 years.
Finance Division Senior Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder and ERD Secretary Fatima Yasmin joined the meeting virtually, among others.