The pace of fund disbursement under the India-Bangladesh Governmental Lines of Credit (LOC) has nearly doubled in one year, as USD 238.68 million has been disbursed in this time, despite the serious challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Total disbursement will soon reach the $1-billion milestone, a press release of the Indian High Commission said on Monday.

It was noted that the India-Bangladesh development partnership has grown significantly in recent years. Bangladesh is India’s largest development partner under its Line of Credit programme with total commitment under LOCs being USD 7.862 billion. 

The 2nd Meeting of the High-Level Project Monitoring Committee to review projects under the India-Bangladesh Governmental Lines of Credit (LOC) was held on Sunday at the Economic Relations Division, Ministry of Finance of Bangladesh.

It was co-chaired by High Commissioner of India Vikram Doraiswami and Fatima Yasmin, Secretary, Economic Relations Division of Ministry of Finance. Delegates included officials of the Economic Relations Division, the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Board of Revenue, Finance Division and Ministry of Home Affairs on the Bangladesh side and High Commission of India and the Exim Bank of India, through which the LOCs are being administered. 

This bilateral mechanism is one of several joint initiatives to further expedite execution of projects, by addressing procedural issues and suggesting the way forward.

The two sides reviewed the status of implementation of the decisions taken by the 1st High Level Project Monitoring Committee Meeting held on January 3, 2021.

Both sides noted with great satisfaction that significant headway has been made under the GoI LOC framework, it said.

Both sides discussed the entire spectrum of implementation issues during the meeting, including the need for standardization of the interpretation of GoI LOC processes and procedures by various Project Authorities of Bangladesh, expediting project preparation and Development Project Proposals (DPP), rationalizing bid qualification criteria, shortening and simplification of bill processing cycles, expediting award of finalized contracts, simplifying visa issuance procedures etc. 

The High Level Committee also identified the next steps to be taken by the Technical Committee, which would meet in due course to discuss issues at an operational level.