The World Bank has approved a $250 million financing to help Bangladesh strengthen its policies to sustain growth following the pandemic and enhance resilience to future shocks. The Bangladesh First Recovery and Resilience Development Policy Credit — the first in a series of two credits — supports fiscal and financial sector policies to enhance macroeconomic stability and sustain growth. It supports expanding and modernising social protection programmes and energy sector policies to improve efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These actions will help the country build resilience against future shocks, including climate change, the World Bank said in a release. “Since 2020, the World Bank has provided over $3 billion to Bangladesh to support emergency response, vaccination, and other Covid-19 recovery efforts,” said Mercy Tembon, World Bank country director for Bangladesh and Bhutan. “This credit will further accelerate the government’s endeavours to strengthen its policies and regulatory framework to pave the way for a green, resilient, inclusive recovery and low-carbon growth.” This programme supports the development of the National Tariff Policy, which will help modernise trade taxes. New policies also enable foreign firms, including non-resident digital services companies, such as the search, social media, and cloud services firms, to submit VAT returns and make payments. READ: WB approves $120 mln loan to develop climate smart agriculture, water management Expanded coverage of the national e-Government Procurement (e-GP) system will increase the efficiency of public expenditure. The financing will also help streamline the bank recovery framework. All scheduled banks will prepare recovery plans, which will be updated annually. New legislation will be prepared to strengthen the stability and efficiency of payment and settlement systems, which will also foster digital and mobile financial services, according to the World Bank. The programme also supports adjustments to the interest rates of several public savings instruments, bringing them closer to the market to reduce distortions. This programme will help the government rapidly scale up cash transfer programmes to respond to future shocks and to expand the use of the government-to-person payment platform for cash-based schemes. This will allow the government to respond more quickly to climate-related crises, including floods and cyclones, by identifying and targeting new and existing beneficiaries for emergency assistance. It will also help Bangladesh with its transition to a low-carbon economy. The revised National Building Code will improve energy efficiency in buildings, while the cancellation of 8,451 MW of planned investment in coal-fired power generation projects supports progress towards Bangladesh’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) 2021. “This financing will help Bangladesh harness digital technology to ensure green and resilient growth,” said Bernard Haven, World Bank senior economist and task team leader for the project. “Fiscal and financial sector policies will help sustain growth, while enhancing the coverage and efficiency of social protection programmes will protect the poor and vulnerable during economic shocks and natural disasters.” The credit is from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), which provides concessional financing, has a 30-year term, including a five-year grace period. Bangladesh currently has the largest ongoing IDA programme, totalling over $14.5 billion.

Legendary Indian sprinter Milkha Singh, popularly known as the 'Flying Sikh', has died from post-Covid complications at a hospital in the northern city of Chandigarh. He was 91. "It is with extreme sadness that we would like to inform you that Milkha Singh Ji passed away at 11.30 pm. on the 18th of June 2021," his family said in a statement. Just five days ago, Singh's wife Nirmal also died due to post-Covid complications. "He fought hard but God has his ways and it was perhaps true love and companionship that both our mother Nirmal ji and now Dad have passed away in a matter of 5 days," the family statement added. READ: World Cup silver medalist Bangladesh Archery team return home Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed condolences over the passing away of the legendary sprinter. "In the passing away of Shri Milkha Singh Ji, we have lost a colossal sportsperson, who captured the nation's imagination and had a special place in the hearts of countless Indians. His inspiring personality endeared himself to millions. Anguished by his passing away," PM Modi tweeted. "I had spoken to Shri Milkha Singh Ji just a few days ago. Little did I know that it would be our last conversation. Several budding athletes will derive strength from his life journey. My condolences to his family and many admirers all over the world," he added. Singh, who was born in undivided India,  won four gold medals at the Asian Games and finished fourth at the 400m final of the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. He also won India's first Commonwealth gold in 1958. Singh who lived with his parents in a remote hamlet in Multan (now in Pakistan) as a child, saw his parents and seven siblings murdered during India's Partition in 1947. READ: Japan’s vaccine push ahead of Olympics looks to be too late As his father died, his last words were "Bhaag (run) Milkha Bhaag". The boy ran -- first for his life, and then to win medals for India where he had arrived as an orphan. In 2013, his life story was turned into the Bollywood biopic, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.

Economists at a webinar on Sunday urged the government to focus on policy reforms to boost private sector investment which is essential to stimulate the post-COVID recovery process. They also remarked that in the absence of comprehensive data collected by national statistical agencies such as Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), it is extremely challenging for policymakers to identify, target or design effective policies to help the worst affected groups of the populations. The observations came up with the webinar organized by South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) titled “Budget 2021-22: Reality and Expectations” to discuss the importance of the national budget in addressing the challenges of the ongoing pandemic. READ: 68% of businesses yet to receive any stimulus: SANEM   Dr Selim Raihan, Professor of Economics Department at Dhaka University and Executive Director of SANEM said since the budget for FY 2021-22 is going to be the second budget announced during the pandemic, policymakers should primarily focus on addressing the urgent needs that have emerged due to the ongoing crisis. “It is extremely important for the policymakers to come to terms with the reality of the current situation and acknowledge the gravity of the socioeconomic crisis that the country is currently facing," he said, stressing upon the importance of COVID-19 management related budget allocations to salvage the health sector through ensuring timely vaccination drives, border controls and building capacity of the medical workforce. One of the key issues that he highlighted is the lack of proper data collection and monitoring since the beginning of the pandemic. He also referred to the findings of SANEM’s ongoing quarterly Business Confidence Survey which reveal that micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have been most negatively impacted due to the pandemic. Despite the severity of the impact, government stimulus packages for MSMEs have been inadequate, making it even more difficult for them to survive through this unprecedented crisis. As these MSMEs play a vital role in the supply chain and also create employment opportunities for the majority of the workers working in the informal sector, recovery of the MSMEs is a major contributing factor to the recovery of the economy as a whole. Dr Raihan mentioned that, although GDP growth rate is an important measure to assess the advancement of the economy, it is high time for policymakers to come out of the obsession of repeatedly using GDP and instead focus on socioeconomic indicators such as poverty, inequality and employment to assess the wellbeing of the nation. “The government needs to properly define the corporate social responsibility of the various business associations. Business associations have an important role to play in this time of crisis. But unfortunately we have seen that at this time they are more occupied with their own demands,” the economist added. Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha, Professor of Economics Department at Dhaka University and Research Director of SANEM delivered the keynote presentation. Dr Sayema acknowledged that the budget for the next fiscal year would have to consider both pre-COVID as well as post-COVID challenges. She pointed out that the existing budget structure suffers from low revenue generation and slow implementation of ADP. Furthermore, despite the consistently high growth in GDP, the pace of employment generation has not been impressive and there has been low spending in human resource development. “In addition, the pandemic has now impacted the livelihoods of millions due to job losses, business closures and reduction in income. A digital divide has become evident in the education sector and rise in dropout rates and early marriages have emerged as major concerns. In this context, the upcoming fiscal budget will play a critical role in dealing with the pandemic fallouts,” she added. The presentation highlighted a declining trend in revenue collection in the recent budgets: 83% of the actual revenue target was met in the fiscal year 2016-17 which decreased to 75% in 2017-18 and 74% in 2018-19. A closer analysis of the composition of the NBR tax revenue reveals that the proportion of income tax in the overall revenue has also declined over the past 5 years. In the fiscal year 2016-17, income tax made up 35.4% of the total tax revenue while in 2021, it declined to only 31.5%. READ: SANEM finds 70% wage-earners in 4 dists. worse off in a year  The government’s Annual Development Programme (ADP) implementation rate has also been staggeringly low in the current fiscal year. ADP implementation progress over July 2020-April 2021 has been below 50% across several key ministries and divisions including Health Services Division, MoPME, MoHPW, Ministry of Industries, Medical Education and Family Welfare Division, MoWCA, MoSW, Food, Labor and Employment, Planning Division. Furthermore, government domestic borrowing in financing the national budget has also increased from 14.8% in FY 2019-20 to 19.4% in FY 2020-21. Dr Sayema stressed that the prime objective of the upcoming fiscal budget should be to ensure better health management while restoring the income level of people through employment generation. To attain this objective, she mentioned four key areas of priority: Health, Education, Social Safety Net and Agriculture.