A meeting scheduled for tomorrow between the government and the local consultative group comprised of representatives of development partners and lenders communities was called off on Saturday, officials said.
The 60-hour general strike called by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance starts at 6:00am tomorrow.
The meeting was scheduled to be held at the National Economic Council at Agargoan in Dhaka.
‘We have called off the meeting,’ said ERD additional secretary Arastoo Khan.
He, however, said there was no strong connection with the opposition-backed political programme with the cancellation of the meeting. He said busy schedule of the finance minister AMA Muhith was a reason.
He said a new schedule would be set soon.
Finance minister AMA Muhith and planning minister AK Khandaker were scheduled to address the meeting. Among others, representatives of the World Bank were supposed to attend it.
The WB, largest multilateral lending agency, skipped the previous two meetings due apparently to its ‘tainted’ relation with the present government over the bribery scandal into the Padma Bridge project.
The WB suspended $1.2 billion credit programme to the bridge project citing conspiracy of corruption by former communication minister Syed Abul Hossain.
Anti-Corruption Commission investigated into the matter, but the WB rejected the ACC findings.
Arastoo Khan said the meeting was crucial as the present government was about to complete its tenure.
Discussion on the last five years’ achievements by the government was high on the agenda, he said.
About 48 Bangladesh-based representatives of bilateral and multilateral development partners, including five international financial institutions, 13 United Nation’s agencies are the members of the LCG which mainly contributes to the annual development programme financing.
LCG members disbursed around $2.78 billion in the last financial year. Of which, $1.88 billion was net disbursement as $899.5 million was spent to pay interests on earlier loans.
The government has targeted fetching net $2 billion from the lenders’ communities in the current fiscal after paying them $1.4 billion to maintain previous loan repayment liabilities. (source)