500 million dollars of IMF waiting for the Prime Minister
Bangladesh officials have received indications from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the multilateral lender's board has agreed in principle to approve Bangladesh's loan request.
Several officials of the Ministry of Finance said that the IMF will approve the loan for Bangladesh on Monday. International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to provide 500 million budget support to Bangladesh. However, this organization of the World Bank Group will not approve the 500 million dollars of this budget support right now.
This information was given by the Governor of Bangladesh Bank at a press conference at the World Bank's Bangladesh office on Thursday (April 13), Washington time. Abdur Rauf Talukdar.
The governor said, "It was the spring meeting of the IMF. We have many schedules in this meeting. For example, I have held many meetings with the World Bank and the IMF. Besides, India invited us as a guest country at the G-20 summit. I had a meeting with finance ministers and governors at G-20. In the meeting with the World Bank, the matter of giving our budget support of 500 million has almost been finalized. However, even if the matter of budget support is finalized, after the honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina comes next week, maybe this money will be approved and the announcement will come.
He said, "Our budget support of 250 million dollars is withheld from the World Bank Group. Could not fulfill some of its conditions. But we have fulfilled all the conditions of this 500 million budget support. Now just the money will be discounted.
He said, "We had many programs with the IMF. There we informed them about the current status of the indicators they asked us to reform. The IMF team will visit Bangladesh at the end of this month. These are continuous processes.
In response to the question whether they have any instructions on the loans given by the IMF, the governor said, "The first review of the money given by them will come next September." Then they will see whether we have achieved the indicators given by them. At the moment, they wanted to know the status of the indicators. We have given them the details. The IMF is happy with our performance so far.”
In response to another question, Abdur Rauf Talukder said, "They do not have any discussion about the sub-city of our various sectors." We are doing reforms in other sectors for our own needs including increasing the price of electricity. There was no discussion on this matter. The dollar will never have a single rate. Everything will have different rates. Import, remittance, export earnings will have different rates. All should be brought within the 2 percent division, the IMF said. But we have already brought it within 2 percent. See our remittance now is 107 taka, export is 105 taka. Here is 2 percent different. Now we will slowly go towards the market.
Rauf Talukder said, "In this Ramadan, all products are available in Bangladesh. There was no product shortage. Basically, we have removed the problems that were in import. Trying to solve all problems. We will not have any crisis in the next six months.
When asked how Bangladesh's reserves are now according to the IMF, he said, "According to the IMF, there should be three months of import reserves. Currently our monthly import expenditure has come down below 6 billion. As such, we can import for 5 months with the reserves we have now. A country has more than its minimum reserves. We have no problem with the reserve.
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