To ease its financial difficulties, the government is craving for supports from various international donor agencies, including the Asian Development Bank, amid worsening economic fallouts caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has sought $50 million or Tk 4,250 crore, from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), recently.
The money will be used as budgetary supports to overcome the unusual crisis inflicted by the virus. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal recently wrote a memorandum to ADB President MasatsuguAsakawa, asking for the fund.
Last week, the World Bank agreed to lend the government Tk 8,840 crore or $105 million to deal with Coronavirus upshots and buy vaccines.
Coronavirus has devastated Bangladesh’s economy. Unfortunately, the nation is facing a second wave of more deadly strain of the virus, currently.
To deal with this adversity, Bangladesh is seeking loan assistances from various donor agencies.
Bangladesh’s Finance Minister claimed in the memo that the state of the economy is good. The GDP growth target was set at 8.15 percent. But due to Coronavirus pandemic, the growth could fall to 5.2 percent.
The global pandemic has cut the worldwide demand for products, he said adding, as a result, the exports has been waning, too.
The epidemic has hit hard the supply and output levels of the country’s industrial and services sectors. Besides, revenue collection has gone down. This has been widening the economy’s revenue deficit. Many workers have been furloughed. All these together makes eradicating poverty tough, experts say.
The memo said an incentive package of Tk 14,600 crore is being implemented to revive the weak economy. The overall expenditure has gone up, especially in the areas of health, services and social security programmes.
Meanwhile, Coronavirus cases, including deaths, have been increasing since late March.
The government is planning to use the ADB assistance for redeeming budget so that it can have ramifications in overall economic activities.
As the prevalence of Coronavirus has increased, the government has taken steps to expand its social security programmes.
To cite an example, all the elderly and widows living across 150 upazilas of the country will be brought under allowances.
The ensuing fund would deal with rehabilitating the frontline workers that include, medical personnel, civil service holders, law enforcement agencies, essential service providers, local and expatriate Bangladeshis-who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19 and to rehabilitate small, medium and cottage industries.
