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Govt to review China-funded projects

Tuesday, 11 October 2011


Syful Islam The government is going to review the ongoing and upcoming Chinese-funded projects in a move to get the update of their implementation progress, officials said Monday. To this effect the Economic Relations Division (ERD) of the Ministry of Finance is going to convene an inter-ministerial meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) at the ERD office. Representatives from the ministries of commerce, primary and mass education, post and telecommunications, industries and roads and railway division will attend the meeting. "We are going to review the implementation progress of the Chinese-funded projects. Of them some are ongoing and some are about to start. We will also review the progress of other projects in phases," a senior ERD official told the FE Monday. The meeting will review the progress of six projects funded by the Chinese government which include: construction of Bangladesh-China friendship exhibition centre, Kazirtek bridge over Arialkha river, second Meghna bridge on Dhaka-Chittagong highway, introduction of 3G (third generation) network and expansion of 2.5G network of Teletalk, Shahjalal fertiliser factory, and construction of a simply equipped rural school. China provides different types of loans to Bangladesh including soft loan, interest subsidised preferential loan, concessional loan and supplier's credit alongside grants. For the network expansion project of the state-run Teletalk, China has provided some US$ 211 million to Bangladesh under a soft loan scheme. With the fund Teletalk is expanding its network to 3G from the existing 2.5G. It is the first telecom company in the country to offer third generation technology to its customers. China is providing some $ 100 million for the construction of the second Meghna bridge on Dhaka-Chittagong highway. For construction of the fertiliser factory in Sylhet, China is providing some $ 559 million to Bangladesh. Of the fund $ 325 million comes as preferential buyer's credit while $ 234 million as a concessional loan. The Shahjalal fertiliser factory will have the capacity of producing 577,000 tonnes of fertiliser a year. According to the government data, the second largest economy of the world during the 1975-2009 period gave $ 1.5 billion loans to Bangladesh of which some $ 978 million was hard type loans. Bangladesh sought Chinese help for construction of multi-billion-dollar deep seaport at Sonadia in Cox's Bazar district. However, the project is yet to get any shape.