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ANTI-POVERTY LOAN

IMF clears $74m in 2nd tranche

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cleared Friday a credit of $74 million as the second tranche of Poverty Reduction Growth Facilities (PRGF) for Bangladesh following fulfilment of a set of conditions.
The PRGF is a concessional facility of the IMF for low-income countries. The fund approved the $517 million PRGF for Bangladesh at 0.5 percent interest in June last year to be disbursed in seven half-
yearly instalments of about $74 million each, subject to fulfilment of a string of conditions in each phase by the government.
The second instalment was scheduled to be approved by December 17 last, which was deferred, as the government could not fulfil one of the conditions -lower the interest rates on government savings certificates -- in time. The government introduced new rates for the certificates from January 1 last.
Other major tasks that had to be carried out for getting the second tranche include withdrawal of letter of credit margin for imports, restructuring of 1,000 large taxpayers' units of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) and continuation of the ongoing NCB (nationalised commercial bank) reform programme.
To avail of the third tranche of PRGF, scheduled to be approved by the IMF Executive Board by June 15, the government now has to meet another three important IMF conditions. Those are revamping the bonded warehouse system and introducing bank guarantee procedure in it; undertaking an audit programme for the 1,000 large taxpayers' units of the NBR and continuation of the NCB reform programme.
While approving the second tranche, the IMF maintained that Bangladesh should improve its governance and business climate and, among other things, form an independent anti-corruption commission.
IMF Executive Board Acting Chairman and Deputy Managing Director Shigemitsu Sugisaki observed, "Bangladesh's economic performance has strengthened in the first year of implementation of the government's PRGF-supported economic programme. Economic growth has picked up, inflation is in check, and the external position has improved more than expected."
He suggested Bangladesh should now aim to speed up the
progress and prepare to face the potential impacts of the phasing out of Multi-fibre Agreement quotas by year-end. He said, "The authorities intend to meet these challenges with determined policy implementation, especially on the structural front, and a strong effort to improve governance and the business climate."
Sugisaki said, "Critical policy measures envisaged are reforms in tax administration and the nationalised commercial banks, implementation of the recently adopted government procurement guidelines, and establishment of an independent anti-corruption commission."
"Reform of the power sector and further progress in downsizing the [number of] manufacturing SOEs [state-owned enterprises] also will be important for improving growth prospects. Budget support to lossmaking enterprises needs to be curtailed, and further efforts made to divest them as soon as possible in order to achieve the authorities' medium-term targets in this area," the IMF acting chairman noted.