High-level PRS meet with donors deferred

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FE Report
A high-level meeting with the country's major donors, slated for this month, has been postponed in view of the government's lack of preparations, a top official said.
The bi-annual Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) Implementation Forum meeting, which was scheduled for November 18-19, will now be held next year.
"The Forum meeting will now be held sometime in January," Economic Relations Division (ERD) secretary Aminul Islam Bhuiyan told the FE.
"We need more time for preparations. In recent days, we've been busy organising the visit of the World Bank president, preceded by the annual meetings of the WB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So, we feel that January will be suitable for holding such a high-profile meet," Islam said.
As senior-level donor officials are expected to arrive here in connection with the Forum, the ERD secretary said the government side needs more time to do "some internal" work.
The PRS Implementation Forum, which succeeded the previous Bangladesh Development Forum, is being organised to take stock of the country's anti-poverty plan implementation.
Although the immediate past BNP-led coalition government prepared the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), the present caretaker administration has extended it until 2008.
Critics say the PRSP has basically remained a paper-based document as there has been no allocation for its implementation.