logo

Bangladesh seeks $500m from WB for COVID-19 vaccine

Saturday, 24 October 2020


Bangladesh has sought $500 million as support from the World Bank for procurement, preservation, transportation and distribution of COVID-19 vaccine for the people of the country.

The country sought the support as an additional allocation under the IDA-19 of the World Bank for the current fiscal year (FY21) for ensuring COVID-19 vaccines for all the countrymen, reports BSS.

The issue was discussed at a meeting between Bangladesh and the World Bank held virtually on Thursday evening as part of the Annual Meetings 2020 of the World Bank and the IMF. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal led the Bangladesh delegation while World Bank Vice President for the South Asia region Hartwig Schafer led the World Bank delegation.

Finance Division Senior Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder and Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Fatima Yasmin and World Bank Country Director Mercy Tembon also remained connected in the meeting, said a press release on Saturday.

It said that the Bangladesh side requested the World Bank to release $250 million on an urgent basis out of the $500 million under the COVID-19 Recovery and Response Project to overcome the various COVID-19 related shocks in the country.

Besides, Bangladesh also requested the lending agency for taking necessary steps for speedily disbursing the 3rd installment of $250 million budget support in the current fiscal year under the World Bank-supported Programmatic Jobs Development Policy Credit (DPC) in order to maintain the country’s affected labour market, financial and social sectors owning to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Finance Division Senior Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder informed that the government has fulfilled most of the conditions of the Jobs DPC project while the rest of the conditions will be fulfilled shortly.

At the very outset of the meeting, the finance minister expressed his gratitude to the World Bank for their continued support to the overall development of Bangladesh.

In order to procure COVID-19 vaccines, Kamal sought the support of the World Bank Vice President Hartwig Schafer for allocating loan assistance for Bangladesh speedily considering the number of population as Bangladesh is the 3rd largest IDA receiving country considering the proportion of the population.

Lauding various speedy and time befitting efforts from the World Bank to face the COVID-19 pandemic, the finance minister mentioned that the World Bank has provided $100 million in assistance to Bangladesh.

ERD Secretary Fatima Yasmin said Bangladesh has shown success in formulating and implementing projects worth $5 billion from IDA and $2 billion from SUF under the IDA-18 which is the highest among the IDA countries.

She urged the World Bank to come up with more allocations under the IDA-19.