WB to provide $500m for power supply modernisation

Industry Desk: A loan agreement was signed yesterday between thegovernment of Bangladesh and the World Bank (WB) under which the lending agency will provide $500 million to modernise the rural electricity distribution system under Dhaka and Mymensingh regions.
Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Fatima Yasmin and World Bank Acting Country Director for Bangladesh and Bhutan Dandan Chen signed the loan agreement on behalf of their respective sides.
WB will provide the US$500 million loan from the IDA-19 Scale-Up Window(SUW). The interest rate of the above mentioned loan is ‘6-month Libor plus the Variable Spread Service Charge: 0.25 percent front-end fee and commitment charge: 0.25 percent’ and this loan has to be repaid in 35 years with a grace period of five years.
Under the Electricity Distribution ModernisationProgramme, the Bangladesh Rural Electricity Board (BREB) will improve its electricity distribution services under Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions. The tenure of the project is January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2026.
The WB will also provide US$15 million as grants from its Clean Technology Fund (CTF).
To this end, another agreement was also signed today between the government of Bangladesh and the WB at that time.