The Asian Development Bank or ADB has reshuffled the current year's projects, pushed back a few and included some fresh programmes with the objective of offsetting the impact of the pandemic on life and livelihood in Bangladesh.
The changes were made while preparing the country operation business plan for 2021-2023 and updating it for 2020-2022 through fielding a mission during the March-June period.
By changing the pipeline for 2020, the Manila-based lender included five new programmes in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The programmes are: Covid-19 active response and expenditure support programme, Covid-19 response emergency assistance for the health sector, mitigating medium and long term economic and social impact of Covid-19, post Covid-19 small-scale employment creation fund, and support to finance compensation package for frontline Covid-19 response workers.
It also advanced two projects-third public-private infrastructure development facility (tranche 2) and microenterprise development project (additional financing) 2021 pipeline to the current one to provide credit access to micro, small and medium enterprises to help mitigate the impact of pandemic-induced economic slowdown, especially in rural areas.
The ADB also changed the pipeline for 2021 to accommodate some new projects for the post-Covid-19 economic recovery.
These are: the second programme for mitigating medium and long-term economic and social impact of Covid-19, agricultural productivity improvement project, and second microenterprise development project.
In its aid memo, the ADB said, the spread of Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the traditional growth drivers of the economy---export-oriented industries, remittances, and domestic consumption, thus slowing down the economic growth in the just-out fiscal year.
The lender said the government is implementing economic stimulus packages amounting to $11.9 billion to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, especially on the vulnerable sections of rural and urban population that risks sliding back into poverty, wiping out the gains made in poverty reduction in the last decade.
"In the absence of any recurrence of Covid-19 outbreak, the recovery is expected to be gradual over the first two quarters of FY'21," it noted.
" … Bangladesh's strong manufacturing base will power a quick recovery," the memo noted.
To accommodate the Covid-19 linked new programmes, the lender pushed back some projects to 2021 for the implementation, which are climate change and disaster resilience small-scale water resource management project, renewable energy project, SASEC Tongi-Akhaura dual gauge project, SASEC Dhaka-Sylhet corridor road project, SASEC trade facilitation sector development project, and Dhaka integrated water supply project (additional financing).
The energy efficiency and renewable energy project has been renamed: scaling up energy efficiency and conservation project and shifted it to 2021 while the digital university project has been moved to 2022 in the new operations plan. A senior finance ministry official told the FE many development projects will now face delays as Covid-related fresh projects will get priority as part of the measure to dilute the impact of the pandemic.
"We have no other option but to push back some important projects for implementing in the next year or so," he said.
The official, however, commended the ADB's response to help Bangladesh address the Covid-19 challenges and expedite recovery.
syful-islam@outlook.com