France keen to meet Bangladesh’s needs: AFD ED

France, having expertise and experience in tackling climate change issues, is keen on meeting Bangladesh’s financing needs by providing AFD concessional loans for green investments and through supporting the government in addressing climate related issues, says Agence Française de Dévelopment (AFD) Executive Director Philippe Orliange.

With the upgrade from least development country (LDC) status and the “rapid” economic development of Bangladesh, the government is looking for massive capital investments while facing unprecedented environmental and climate change issues, he told UNB in an exclusive interview.

During his two-day visit recently, the highest-level AFD mission to date, Orliange acknowledged the growing collaboration between AFD and Bangladesh over the past decade.

The AFD, a financial institution of the French government, is currently operating in 110 countries with an annual commitment of around 12 billion euros – half of it in Africa and the rest in Asia, South America and the Middle East.

The French Embassy in Dhaka and AFD’s Dhaka office organised the Bangladesh visit of the executive director considering the population size of the country that is significant for a development partner.

Orliange, who had a meeting with the finance and ERD secretaries of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) and the Bangladesh Bank governor on the same day, said the portfolio of Bangladesh is around 1.4 billion euros

He also attended a roundtable, titled “The role of France in tackling climate change, both globally as well as in Bangladesh”.

The roundtable was facilitated by International Center for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD).

“First of all, let me say that I am quite happy to finally come to Bangladesh, it is a very interesting country from a development point of view. It is really important for AFD to understand a country and its dynamics in order to adapt our services,” said the AFD executive director.

Responding to a question, he said his visit has had three main purposes: acknowledging and celebrating achievements of the AFD-GoB collaboration over the past decade, reassuring the full support of AFD in the future, and exploring new areas of cooperation with the Government of Bangladesh around climate change and green

finance.

AFD’s financing in Bangladesh almost tripled over the last three years (a total of 1.4 billion euro has been committed since 2012).

“We signed with the government loans and grants for 543M€ in the last 2 years (2021 and 2022). It was agreed with the government that AFD would commit to around 300M€ annually in the coming years,” Orliange said.