Bangladesh will receive $4.5 billion in loans from the Asian Development Bank over next four years to strengthen efforts to reduce the poverty which still grips a third of its population, an ADB official said on Thursday. "The assistance over a period till 2015 aims to develop infrastructure, energy and electricity to generate more employment through industrialisation," he told Reuters.
It would also help boost Bangladesh's farming and communication sectors. Of the total loan, $2.4 billion will come from ADB's soft-lending arm, the Asian Development Fund, and the rest from the Ordinary Capital Resources. Bangladesh's Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith told reporters on Thursday that the ADB assistance would help to achieve economic growth and cut poverty.
Bangladesh is targetting economic growth of 7.0 percent in the fiscal year to the end of June 2012. Over the last few years credit and other financial assistance offered by development partners were equivalent to only two percent of the country's GDP (gross domestic product), officials said. Around one-third of Bangladesh's 160 million people still live on just $1.25 a day, according to government officials. Bangladesh's GDP in the fiscal year ending in June 2011 was about $110 billion and the per capita income was $818, according to government statistics.
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