The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Tuesday signed a $250 million loan agreement with the government of Bangladesh to finance reforms for improving the inclusiveness and responsiveness of the social development and resilience program here.
Fatima Yasmin, secretary, Economic Relations Division (ERD), and Manmohan Parkash, country director, ADB, virtually signed the loan agreement on behalf of Bangladesh and ADB, respectively, said an ADB press release.
“A strong social protection program, backed by the government’s stimulus and incentive packages, largely contributed to the commendable 5.2% estimated GDP growth in fiscal year 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Country Director Manmohan Parkash.
Complimenting the government for its focus on social inclusion, the country director said: “ADB is pleased to support Bangladesh through this innovative program, in further widening, deepening, and harmonizing its social protection actions for increasing the resilience of the poor and promoting an inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Parkash also said building on the cross-sectoral experiences in inclusive and sustainable development, the ADB would support Bangladesh in improving the efficiency, financial inclusion, consolidation, standardization, integration, streamlining and continuous evaluation of the social protection system.
The release said the Strengthening Social Resilience Program will include institutional and policy reforms to address cross-sector issues of social development in Bangladesh.
These include improving the coverage and efficiency of the social protection system through improving the administrative efficiency of social protection management.
The program will expand its outreach to vulnerable women by increasing the coverage of both the old age allowance for women over 62 and the allowance for widowed, socially marginalized, and destitute women in 150 poverty-stricken upazilas.
Other reforms include promoting the use of mobile financial services and simplifying identification and documentation requirements for opening a bank account and broadening the scope of social protection from mere poverty relief to life cycle social and health responses, including social insurance system.
ADB will also provide a technical assistance grant to support program implementation, policy analyses, and capacity development for social development-related ministries. The technical assistance is estimated to cost $1.2 million which will be financed on a grant basis by the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction.
