ADB provides $250m to boost social resilience in Bangladesh

The Asian Development Bank and the Bangladesh government on Tuesday signed a $250 million loan agreement to finance reforms for improving the inclusiveness and responsiveness of the country’s social development and resilience programme.

Fatima Yasmin, secretary of the Economic Relations Division (ERD), and Manmohan Parkash, country director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), virtually signed the loan agreement on behalf of Bangladesh and ADB, respectively, said a press release.

“A strong social protection programme, backed by the government’s stimulus and incentive packages, largely contributed to the commendable 5.2 per cent estimated GDP growth in the fiscal year 2020 despite the Covid-19 pandemic,” said ADB Country Director Manmohan Parkash.

Complimenting the government for its focus on social inclusion, he said, “ADB is pleased to support Bangladesh through this innovative programme, in further widening, deepening, and harmonising its social protection actions for increasing the resilience of the poor and promoting an inclusive recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“Building on our cross-sectoral experiences in inclusive and sustainable development, we will support Bangladesh in improving the efficiency, financial inclusion, consolidation, standardisation, integration, streamlining and continuous evaluation of the social protection system,” Parkash added.

The strengthening social resilience programme will include institutional and policy reforms to address cross-sector issues of social development in Bangladesh. These include improving the coverage and efficiency of the social protection system through improving the administrative efficiency of social protection management, reads the release.

The programme will expand its outreach to vulnerable women by increasing the coverage of both the old age allowance for women over 62 and the allowance for widowed, socially marginalised, and destitute women in 150 poverty-stricken upazilas.

Other reforms include promoting the use of mobile financial services and simplifying identification and documentation requirements for opening a bank account and broadening the scope of social protection from mere poverty relief to life cycle social and health responses, including social insurance system.

ADB will also provide a technical assistance grant to support program implementation, policy analyses, and capacity development for social development-related ministries. The technical assistance is estimated to cost $1.2 million which will be financed on a grant basis by the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction.