Bangladesh spent US$1.71 billion in the first five months of this fiscal to service foreign debts, which is around 27-percent higher than the aid inflow worth $1.35 billion.
Lower inflow of foreign aid is attributed to numerous domestic and external factors, including sluggish pace of implementation of development projects, current interim government's reservation over several major ongoing projects, postponement of fund release by some of the bilateral development partners.
The sum total was a negative growth in net inflow of foreign loans by $362.56 million.
The ERD released Sunday the November issue of its regular publication on foreign aid which found a 27-percent decrease in the disbursement of foreign aid in the July-November period the fiscal year 2024-25 compared to the same period of the last fiscal year.
The report also showed 91.08-percent drop in the amount of commitment of funding by the foreign development partners during the same time.
However, the cost of servicing external loans increased by 28.44 per cent while calculating through USD and 39.48 per cent calculating in the domestic currency, Taka, according to the report.
Economists and experts expressed concern over surging pressure of debt-servicing on the exchequer against falling disbursement and commitment of new loans.
The ERD report reveals that all of the development partners disbursed $1.54 billion in the first five months of the fiscal year: $195.27 million as grants and $1.35 billion as loans.
The disbursement during the same period in the last fiscal was $2.12 billion: $68.7 million as grants and $2.05 billion as loans.
"Despite a significant increase in grants disbursement, the overall aid disbursement got reduced by over 27 per cent," says the report.
The ERD has observed significant contraction in commitment of new aid to $522.68 million in the five months from $5.86 billion in the same period of the last fiscal.
The report reveals that the ERD failed to receive any commitment of foreign aid from some of the major development partners, including the ADB, AIIB, India, China and Russia.
The ADB disbursed the highest $318.11 million in the first five months of the fiscal year, while Japan ranked second with disbursement of $307.99 million.
Among other development partners, the World Bank released $205.44 million, India $63.82 million, China $135.28 and Russia $244.99 million.
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