The World Bank (WB) will lend $250-million financial support to the interim administration's reforms at five government agencies with an eye to establishing governance and accountability, according to officials.
The National Board and Revenue (NBR), the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority (BPPA), the Statistical Informatics Division (SID) and the Planning Division would do the reforms.
The Washington-based lender would provide the money shortly as the Planning Commission's Project Evaluation Committee (PEC) has recently given the green light to a project relating to the reforms, Economic Relations Division (ERD) officials said on Saturday.
"The loan will be used to do some reforms in the NBR, CAG, BPPA, SID and Planning Division for strengthening their capacity aimed at establishing transparency and accountability," according to a senior ERD official.
He said this loan support would bring some major changes in the services administered by the five critical public agencies in question.
Under the 'Strengthening Institutions for Transparency and Accountability (SITA)' project, the government will conduct structural and regulatory reforms of the agencies, and also bump up the capacity of their manpower.
A Planning Commission (PC) official said the main objective of the project was to enhance transparency, reliability and access to official statistics, increase tax compliance and boost efficiency and accountability of public spending.
According to the WB, the project will provide technical and financial support to the agencies to implement and institutionalise urgent transparency and accountability reforms undertaken by the interim government within its mandate with a focus on digitisation.
Strengthening the capacity of these institutions would be critical for the country's current and future governments to successfully implement their governance agenda and improve public service delivery, it said.
According to another ERD official, the revenue board has so far failed to bring a smart tax receipt and payment systems. "The SITA project will help upgrade its digitisation in a bid to make tax collectors more taxpayer-friendly."
As the CAG is the only constitutional body for auditing all public expenditure, the project will facilitate good governance and accountability among the spenders of state funds, he says.
The BPPA has already done a good job in establishing e-Government Procurement (e-GP) system, which needs to be smarter for transparent government purchases and checking misappropriation.
The Planning Division is the sole authority to process development project proposals of all ministries. Its capacity would be augmented through reforms with the WB's support, said the PC official.
The WB funds will be utilised to enhance the capability of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics under the SID to ensure trustworthy and reliable data production, he added.
The WB-funded SITA project would be implemented until June 2030.
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