The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group, is set to raise its investment up to US $ 1.0 billion in Bangladesh, mainly in the areas of textile and climate change, in the next fiscal year (FY).
Serge Devieux, IFC Director for South Asia, disclosed it Wednesday.
The IFC investment in the country reached $ 774 million for the private sector of the country so far in the current fiscal, he also said. It was aimed at ramping up the country's economic growth.
"The IFC spent $ 12 million this year in Bangladesh for only advisory service, which is one third of the budget spent in the region," Mr Serge said while stating the importance of the country to the corporation.
The visiting IFC regional head was talking to a group of journalists about the corporation's investment and programme for the upcoming FY. Country Manager Kyle F Kelhofer was also present.
Mr Serge said the IFC wanted to focus more on the textile sector development, workers' safety, energy efficiency and climate change issues from the perspective of sustainability as it believed that the country had the potential to be the world's top textile supplier.
He said both in terms of population and potential, Bangladesh was very important for the IFC. The textile sector had been the biggest employment sector and its growth from the job of assembling to textile fabric was significant.
"We have transformative agenda on the textile sector to create jobs, maintain jobs and attain development to a certain level and mitigate impact of the shortcoming of infrastructure and so on," he added.
The IFC launches the Better Work programme and Partnership for Cleaner Textile this year to meet compliance issues of the readymade garment sector ensuring workers' safety, energy efficiency, conservation, environment etc., , the director said.
The country still needed changes in the regulation to improve the business environment and IFC continued its effort in this regard, he added.
Country manager Kyle F Kelhofer said the long-term target of the IFC was to bring peoples of the region together meeting one's need from others.
Citing the potential of meeting seasonal energy needs of the region, he said the IFC continued its advisory service and increased the capacity of the countries like Bhutan and Nepal to generate their power so that they could trade those during the less demand season.
"It will be like complimentary," he added.
