PRS Implementation Forum may meet in city late-Nov

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FHM Humayan Kabir
The Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) Implementation Forum is likely to meet in Dhaka late November this year to find out ways to support Bangladesh in the days to come, official sources said.
The PRS Implementation Forum, which replaced the Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) since 2005, is a gathering of donors who provides development assistance for the country.
A senior Economic Relations Division (ERD) official told the FE Thursday that the Local Consultative Group (LCG), comprising donor representatives in Bangladesh, might finalise the date of the Forum at its meeting on Sunday.
"The government may propose a date in late November as a suitable time for holding the Forum," he said.
The LCG meeting, to be held in the ERD conference room Sunday, will discuss the current situation arising out of the flood and possibly fix a date for the Forum.
The first PRS Implementation Forum was held from November 15 to 17 in 2005 in the capital. Although the next meeting was to be held in late 2006, it could not be due to political turmoil in the country.
Prior to the PRS Implementation Forum in November 2005, the BDF was held in Dhaka in 2003 and 2004 where the donors made their commitment to provide financial support to the government after evaluating the country's progress in various sectors.
The BDF was organised by the global lender World Bank with the participation of more than 30 development partners of Bangladesh including Asian Development Bank (ADB), UK's Department for International Development (DFID), Japan, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, United Nations and European Commission (EC).
The last BDF was held in May 2004. After that Bangladesh decided to transform the BDF into a Forum for the implementation of the "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)," which was subsequently finalised.
According to the sources in the ERD, apart from Bangladesh government all the multilateral and bilateral donors will gather at the next meeting in Dhaka where the government will make presentation on the progress of country's different sectors in line with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and will try to convince the donors to extend their support to the country in future days.
As per suggestions of the donors, the government finalised the PRSP in October 2005 in order to achieve the millennium development goal (MDG) by 2015. The implementation and the way forward of the PRSP was discussed in a government led PRS Implementation Forum in November 2005.
The ERD sources official said that the donors in the PRS Implementation Forum meeting in May 2005 emphasised the need for accelerated policy reforms and more efficient use of resources available. "In the next Forum, the progress of policy reforms and utilisation of external resources will get priority for discussion," he informed.
About the last BDF in May 2004, a Finance Ministry official said that the government explained its development priorities and the future strategy. But no financial assistance pledges were made in the Forum as the government was not able to show tangible improvements despite its promises, the source added.
He said: "The last BDF drew dissatisfaction and severe criticism by some donor countries, which seemed to have made the government initially think that some small donors were always criticising it in spite of the small amount of aid they extended. Therefore, the government wanted to abolish BDF and instead, hold a forum every alternative year, saying that it cannot make meaningful progress within a year."