World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim has met with Finance Minister AMA Muhith during his visit to Bangladesh.
“We have great faith in the direction that Bangladesh is going under the leadership of the minister (Muhith) and the prime minister,” Kim said during a joint briefing with the minister.
The World Bank president reiterated the $3.0 billion in development loans the international organisation is providing Bangladesh with. The amount is the second largest among all its clients, he said.
Jim Yong Kim and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres are currently in Bangladesh to visit the Rohingya refugees living in the refugee camps.
Finance Minister Muhith thanked Kim for his visit, saying it was a great pleasure that the visit came at this ‘critical hour’ for the nation.
“This country has had the advantage of being refugees in other countries and we can never forget it. Therefore we have taken in the refugees with open arms,” he said.
“But, certainly we want them to go back to their country with dignity and safety. This is all that we want and there we are getting the support of the international community in a big way.”
Kim said that he and Secretary General Guterres were greatly concerned by the Rohingya situation. The two are scheduled to visit the camps tomorrow.
He also thanked the people and the government of Bangladesh for receiving the refugees in a ‘peaceful’ and ‘humane’ manner.
The World Bank Group had begun to work on refugee situations in recent years because of the intervention of Secretary General Guterres when he was the UN high commissioner for refugees, Kim said.
“About five years ago he reached out to me and he said the World Bank has to be get involved because some of these situations last so long that they are not just refugee situations, they are development situations,” he said. “It was the vision of Sec Gen Guterres five years ago that brought us into the picture.”
Kim highlighted the $480 million in grants the World Bank had recently announced to support the Rohingyas, bdnews24 reported.
“We insist that generous, humane countries that support refugees should not be punished for that. That’s why, on the insistence of the finance minister, the citizens and the prime minister, we are doing everything we can to ensure that the resources come in the form of grants.”
The World Bank is also supportive of the UN agreements on the Rohingya issue, he added, reiterating that the organisation would do all it could to help Bangladesh.
“And once again I want to say to the people of Bangladesh that the rest of the world is very grateful for your humane reception, but we also know that there is more to do – there is more work to do, there are more services to provide – and we are here to do just that.”