The World Bank’s Vice President for South Asia Hartwig Schafer has praised Bangladesh's recent success in recovering the economy from the adverse impact of Covid-19.

He said Bangladesh's economy is doing better than many other countries and the economy has turned around by tackling cowardice.

At the World Bank-IMF annual meeting 2021, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal requested to adopt a flagship project for Dhaka City aimed at facilitating communication as well as a more aesthetic city.

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Responding to that he said good news regarding the proposal will be available soon as the World Bank sees it positively.

Kamal said that due to giving loans against the project as per the conventional rules, it is often seen that the projects are not ready and it takes a lot of time to prepare them slowing the pace. .

To overcome this slow pace, Kamal requested the World Bank to provide project loans in the form of budget support, then the government would be able to release funds for those projects which are ready on priority basis and the pace of projects would be accelerated.

A bilateral meeting between Kamal and Schaefer was held at a hotel in the capital on Sunday.

Senior Secretaries of the Internal Resources Department Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem, Finance Division Abdur Raouf Talukder, Secretaries of Economic Relations Department Fatema Yasmin and Financial Institutions Department Sheikh Md. Salim Ullah, participated in the discussion as members of the Bangladesh delegation.

On the other hand, on behalf of the World Bank, Mercy Miyang Tembon, Country Director of the World Bank in Bangladesh; Zoubida Kherous Allaoua, Regional Director (South Asia) of the World Bank, Cecile Fruman, South Asia Regional Integration and Cooperation Officer participated in the meeting.

The finance minister narrated Bangldesh’s economic achievements in recent years.

"Our export earnings are growing at more than 24 per cent, foreign exchange reserves $45-46 billion; debt-to-GDP ratio is still below 40 per cent; inflation in Bangladesh is like all other countries in the world, has risen but is still below 6 per cent; The growth in revenue collection is about 17 per cent; Non-performing loans fell to 8.1 per cent; debt has increased by 9.5 per cent in the first quarter of the current financial year and interest rate on bank loans has come down to 7.3 percent,” Kamal said.

Read: WB lauds Bangladesh's economic growth despite downturn

He also urged the World Bank for quick release of $500 million to keep operative the labour market as well as social sector, as assistance program under the programmatic recovery and resilience development policy credit (DPC).

Schafer recommended that the project be more dynamic in each area of design, processing, approval and implementation.

To this end, he proposed to the Economic Relations Department, the Ministry / Department implementing the project and the World Bank to take initiative for timely implementation of the project.

He emphasized the need to expedite the implementation of the ongoing Recovery and Resilience DPC, Climate Change-related Policy Actions and the adoption and implementation of new projects in the field of Regional Integration and Cooperation.