MM News

DHAKA: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a $4.7 billion support loan package for Bangladesh to help it cope with soaring energy and food costs that have sparked huge protests, making it the first to secure such funds out of three South Asian countries that applied last year amid economic trouble.

Bangladesh’s regional counterparts, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are doing much worse economically but have not been able to get final approval for IMF loans. Pakistan is in the grips of a major crisis and facing the prospect of looming national bankruptcy, with an IMF delegation visiting Tuesday to discuss a vital cash injection.

Signing off the $4.7 billion support loan for Bangladesh, the IMF said the loans will “protect macroeconomic stability and rebuild buffers, while helping to advance the authorities’ reform agenda”. The agenda includes creating fiscal space to enable greater social and developmental spending, strengthening Bangladesh’s financial sector, boosting fiscal and governance reforms and building climate resilience.

In a statement, the IMF said “since independence, Bangladesh has made steady progress in reducing poverty and significant improvements in living standards,” Antoinette M. Sayeh, the IMF’s deputy managing director, said in a statement.

“However, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Russia’s war in Ukraine interrupted this long period of robust economic performance,” Sayeh added. “Multiple shocks have made macroeconomic management challenging in Bangladesh.”