ADB to review $13b projects next week

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will review its nearly $13 billion projects in Bangladesh next week as many are struggling for implementation delays, officials said on Tuesday.
The Manila-based lender would sit with all the project implementers in the Bangladesh government for analysing the project execution status, they added.
"All the ongoing ADB-funded projects will be reviewed at the tripartite meeting next week. Any problems are expected to be resolved at the meeting," said a senior official at the Economic Relations Division (ERD).
According to the ERD, the meeting between the ADB, the ERD and the projects implementers will be held in Dhaka from July 22 to 24.
Currently, the ADB has made a commitment of nearly $13 billion funds for 79 ongoing projects in the public sector.
The moneylender is the second largest multilateral development partner of Bangladesh in terms of its amount of foreign aid for implementing different projects and programmes after its independence.
"Some ADB-funded projects are struggling for implementation delays due to different reasons. We are hopeful of resolving the problems in the next tripartite review meeting (TPRM)," said the ERD official.
A senior official at the finance ministry said: "Some delays are taken place due to the under-performance of the implementing agencies and some are for the complex procurement approval process of the ADB side. So, we'll discuss all the problems in the next meeting for reducing the delays."
The ADB is bankrolling some mega projects in Bangladesh, including the Dohazari-Ramu-Cox's Bazar railway line, Dhaka Mass Rapid Transit Development Investment Project (Line 5, Southern Route), and South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation Dhaka-Northwest Corridor Road Project, Phase 2 (Tranche 3).
The official said the bank will review the projects it is bankrolling in Bangladesh next week as some of them are 'slow-moving' and 'problematic'.
It is an important meeting from the perspective of the Bangladesh government side as this would remove many obstacles which are not resolved through writing letters on the way to the implementation, he said.
The ADB in the last TPRM called the government agencies for streamlining the implementation of slow-moving projects or it would divert funds to other schemes, another government official told the FE.
The last review also prepared an action plan for the ongoing ADB-funded projects which would be discussed at the next week's review meeting, he added.
In the July-April period of the fiscal year 2023-24, the ADB disbursed $1.499 billion worth of assistance and $1.787 billion in FY2023 to Bangladesh, ERD data showed.

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