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Donors for ’indicative estimate' instead of aid pledge

By Inam Ahmed
As Finance Minister SAMS Kibria is working hard to get some sort of pledge at the ensuing April 13-14 Development Forum meeting in Paris, the donors may tactically avoid doing so.
Sensing the aid fatigue. Kibria has sent a letter to the donors mentioning that they had pledged aid to some countries like Vietnam and Indonesia and urged them to do the same for Bangladesh.
The letter was discussed at yesterday's meeting of the local consultative group (LCG) at the World Bank office in the city.
While some donors felt that the Paris meeting should not be turned into a pledging session, others were more sympathetic toward the government, sources
said.
It was also expressed in the meeting that since there is no real link between commitment and availability of aid. there is also no point in pledging in the annual aid club meeting.
But later, it was decided that donors will aggregate their budget for the next year and send an Indicative estimate ahead of the Paris meeting, thus avoiding making It a pledging session.
A sub-committee of the donors would sit together after the Eid holiday to draft the letter.
Some of the donors felt that sending a letter informing the finance minister in advance about the assistance available would avert any later embarrassment.
Last year the finance minister said at a press conference that the donors had pledged US 1.96 billion dollar which was later contested by donors who said they had not made any specific pledge. The donors also held internal meetings in which they expressed dissatisfaction over the finance minister's claims. This ultimately turned into an embarrassment for both the government and the donors.
How much of the aid Indicated by the donors will be finally available will depend on the government's programmes and policies, donors observed.
At this point, corruption and governance came up for discussion and donors now want to link aid to improvement of governance. The meeting felt that corruption should be the single biggest issue which should determine their aid amount.
The report on corruption prepared for the April 13-14 meeting was discussed in the meeting. According to sources, the report contains people's perception study on corruption and interviews with a number of retired senior government officials which revealed some interesting dimensions of corruption in the society.