DHAKA: A top regional official of IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, met this week with the governor of Bangladesh’s central bank, saying the institution will ramp up its operations in the country to boost job creation and economic competitiveness.
Serge Devieux, IFC Regional Director for South Asia, met Bangladesh Bank Dr Atiur Rahman to reaffirm IFC’s commitment towards building momentum for rapid, inclusive, and sustained growth in the country.
‘We are working towards expanding job-creation opportunities, building critical infrastructure — including power, energy, and transport — and supporting better working conditions in the readymade garments sector to improve Bangladesh’s competitiveness,’ Devieux said, according to a release.
IFC’s work in Bangladesh supports the World Bank Group’s goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. In the last two years, IFC invested over a $1 billion in the country.
In the current fiscal year, IFC has committed nearly $400 million for 12 projects till date.
These include supporting natural-gas resources development, funding an independent power project to ensure the supply of electricity is reliable and affordable, and expanding trade finance and efficient working capital solutions for domestic private industry.
Bangladesh, which accounts for 5 percent of the world’s poor, is one of IFC’s largest country-specific advisory programs.
IFC is completing its South Asia Enterprise Development Facility program, which was launched in 2002 in partnership with the UK government and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
The program has helped increase the incomes of farmers — and boosted the revenues of micro, small, and medium enterprises — by more than $160 million. It has also generated estimated savings of $14 million for private businesses, and it has helped avoid about 84,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
IFC has a growing pipeline of investment projects in sustainable energy, power generation and distribution, economic zones, sea ports, inland transport, and the financial sector.
It also is implementing new advisory programs such as the Partnership for Cleaner Textiles, with support from Netherlands; the Better Work initiative with the International Labour Organization to improve the rights and safety of workers in the garment industry; and the South Asia Regional Trade and Investment project for enhanced economic integration.
In addition, IFC is scaling up its advisory work on public-private partnerships to help mobilize financing for and build essential infrastructure, the release added.
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. Working with private enterprises in more than 100 countries, we use our capital, expertise, and influence to help eliminate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.
In FY13, our investments climbed to an all-time high of nearly $25 billion, leveraging the power of the private sector to create jobs and tackle the world’s most pressing development challenges.
BDST: 1635 HRS, JUN 22, 2014
