The World Bank (WB) is likely to scale up its development financing to Bangladesh with $1.9 billion new fund commitment for the current 2015-16 financial year. The issue of growing portfolio in Bangladesh was discussed at a meeting between Finance Minister AMA Muhith and WB Senior vice President Kyle Peters held in Lima, Peru on Saturday, says a WB release received here on Sunday. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the IMF-WB annual meeting held in Lima where the finance minister was leading a Bangladesh delegation. Apart from the commitment figures the WB’s annual disbursement target of nearly $1 billion for FY16 was also revealed at the meeting. “They discussed the WB’s growing portfolio in Bangladesh, which in 2015-16 included new financing commitments amounting to $ 1.9 billion and disbursements of almost $1 billion”, said the WB. The amount of new financing commitment is much higher than the government’s fund commitment target of $1.62 billion from the Washington-based multilateral lender as has been recently set by the Economic Relations Division (ERD) for FY16. But the $1 billion potential fund disbursement target might remain low compared to ERD’s set target of $1.25 billion from the WB in the current fiscal year, although the amount of fund release from the lender in the previous fiscal year was higher than the targeted 950 million. Muhith and Kyle Peters also discussed the government’s progress in advancing various reforms, including in the areas of taxation, standards, and companies, that are intended to improve the investment climate and that, if passed, could be supported by a World Bank development policy operation, the release said. Peters also expressed his intention to visit Bangladesh in the near future.
