Foreign aid commitment to Bangladesh has plunged drastically by 50 per cent to US$659.18 million in four months until October this fiscal due to some development partners' 'go-slow' policy after the new government assumed office the January 05 polls, officials said Thursday.
However, foreign assistance disbursement showed a positive 17 per cent growth to $678.67 million during July-October period this fiscal compared to the corresponding period of last FY2014.
Economics Relations Division (ERD) statistics, released Thursday, showed that in the first four months of the current FY2015, donors working in Bangladesh had made commitment of $659.18 million in loans and grants.
In the same period of last fiscal, they had confirmed $1,326.11 million assistance.
Farida Nasreen, a joint secretary of the ERD, told the FE that although aid commitment at the beginning of the year had been showing lower trend, ultimately the
flow would go up in the second half of the financial year.
The development partners including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Japan, disbursed $678.67 million in loans and grants during July-October period of the FY2014-15 compared to $576.80 million in the same period last fiscal, the ERD data showed.
"Negotiations for some pipeline projects were delayed after the new government took over in January last. So, aid commitment has also been affected. We hope, the situation will be changed in the remaining months of the fiscal," said a senior ERD official.
Besides, the last political turmoil on the issue of national election also affected aid commitment to Bangladesh, he added.
However, another ERD high official told the FE since the government is scrutinising aid proposals of donors strictly, this might have affected commitment of foreign assistance.
Meanwhile, the project implementing agencies did well in the last few months after political impasse in the middle of the last fiscal. This helped the country receive higher foreign aid during the July-Oct period, he added.
The ERD statistics showed that of the $678.67 million aid, the government received $582.94 million in loans and $95.76 million in grants during July-October period of FY2015.
Of the $659.18 million aid commitment, $600 million was loans and $59.18 million grants in the first four months of the current fiscal.
The World Bank in July-Oct period disbursed $156.32 million assistance, the Asian Development Bank $149.06 million, the United Nations' IFAD $116.95 million and the Islamic Development Bank $40 million assistance in July-October period this fiscal.
The government received a record US$3.0 billion foreign aid in the last FY2013-14 following a significant rise in disbursement by the World Bank and China, officials said.
The concessional aid inflow into the country from July 2013 to June 2014 was $189 million higher than that of $2.81 billion in the previous FY2013 and $50 million higher than the $2.95 billion target, the ERD data showed.
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