Early starts govt search for external funds-

Early starts the government's search for budget-support credits for the current fiscal year with preference for external funds to avert further domestic push to inflation, officials said.
Requests for funding the budget deficit have already been dispatched to some bilateral and multilateral development, they said Friday.
The donors approached include the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the World Bank and Japan.
"We've requested some multilateral and bilateral lenders for providing the budget support in the current fiscal. We are hopeful of getting some loans within the first half of this fiscal year," said a senior Ministry of Finance (MoF) official.
Meanwhile, three key donors -- ADB, AIIB and Japan -- under a common initiative had already provided $400 million, $400 million and $209 million respectively in the immediate-past financial year (FY23).
In early May in the last FY, the ADB and the AIIB confirmed a total of $800 million worth of policy loan while Japan followed suit with $209 million in June.

The budget deficit for the current 2023-24 financial year has been estimated at Tk 2.62 trillion, 5.2 per cent of the GDP. The total size of the budget for the current FY is Tk 7.62-trillion.
"The fund mobilisation for the massive deficit budget this year will be challenging. So, we have to mobilise more external funds to finance the shortfall," says another MoF official about merit of the jumpstart.
A senior Economic Relations Division (ERD) official told the FE that they had already started talks with the two Asian development-financing banks -- the ADB and the AIIB -- on budgetary support.
"We are hopeful of getting at least $800 million worth of budget support from the two lenders like they came forward in the just-concluded FY2023," he adds.
Besides, as Japan was also on the same platform in providing the policy loan to Bangladesh government in the last fiscal, this time also Dhaka is upbeat about gathering some budgetary support from Bangladesh's largest bilateral donor.
"We have also requested the World Bank to prove budget support as the country needs minimising the fiscal dearth from external resources," the ERD official said.
The MoF official said the government has taken a strategy to minimise the deficit through borrowing from the external sources rather than borrowing more from the internal resources to deflate pressures on domestic finances.
"Less borrowing from the internal resources will reduce the domestic inflationary pressure," he added.
Consumer inflation in the country is reportedly staying high -- peaking to 9.7 per cent in recent days -- amid price rises.
Meanwhile, the government, in the last fiscal, signed agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for getting $4.7 billion to bankroll the deficit budget.
The IMF has already put some hard conditions of reforms in macroeconomic, banking and taxation sectors for getting the loan in installments that spill over into the current budget year.
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