Bangladesh will get $2 billion in soft loans from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to fight poverty in the South Asian nation of 140 million, a senior government official said on Saturday.
Mohammad Aminul Islam Bhuiyan, secretary of the Economic Relations Division of the finance ministry told Reuters the Saudi-based development lender made the commitment during its president's three-day visit to Bangladesh. "As Bangladesh targets to reduce poverty by 50 percent by 2015, assistance from the development partners are necessary," Bhuiyan said.
The assistance will come from IDB's Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD), launched earlier this year with an initial endowment of $1.4 billion, he said. The IDB will also to fund Bangladesh's rehabilitation programmes after severe floods that killed 769 people and left about six million homeless, Bhuiyan said. He said an IDB mission will soon visit Bangladesh to determine how and how much it will contribute, but Dhaka will seek about $1.5 billion in aid.
Comments
Comments are closed.