BDF meeting in city next week

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FE Report
Bangladesh will intensify efforts to secure additional aid to implement its key anti-poverty strategy linked to the five-year development plan as donors descend on the capital next week, a top aid official said Monday.
After a lapse of almost five years, the government will organise Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) on February 15-16 aiming to sensitise the donor community about the development needs of the country hailed as "recession-proof."
"It's no longer a pledging session. But our purpose is to drive home the message of resource needs," Economic Relations Division secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told reporters at a briefing in the city.
"Securing aid is competitive. You've to sell yourself," he said.
"We'll discuss issues, articulate our expectations. That can help influence donors' aid distribution policy," he said.
Mr Bhuiyan said the government would require demonstrating two basic things before the international donor community: aid requirement and the capacity to spend development aid
"If we are given aid money, we need to show we can use it, has the absorption capacity," he added.
The donor group, known as local consultative group (LCG), is a platform of the country's 32 major bilateral and multilateral donors.
Economic relations division secretary and country head of the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) co-chair the group.
The last Paris consortium meeting was held in March 2002 before re-branding it as the Bangladesh Development Forum, held in May 2003.
Such forums were discontinued since 2005 when the PRS implementation forum, a replica of development forum meet, was held.
Mr Bhuiyan said Prime minister Sheikh Hasina will open the forum, followed by six business sessions including governance, energy and power, agriculture and food security, transport and communications and climate change.