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Public procurement law in the offing

Saifur says this will bring in Tk 3,000cr aid

UNB, Dhaka
The government is going to enact a public procurement act within a very short time to make the state procurement process transparent.
Finance and Plaiming Minister M Saifur Rahman disclosed this on his arrival from the USA by British Airways at Zia International Airport (ZIA) at 5:30am yesterday.
"Donors want to see our procurement process transparent... if we can enact the act tomorrow, we will get Tk 3,000 crore aid right the day after tomorrow, ” he said.
Talking to the reporters at the VIP lounge, the finance minister said the
existing Public Procurement Regulation will be transformed into an act through tabling it in the parliament. He also apprised that the act would be passed as early as possible.
"If our procurement process could not be made transparent, we would not get any financial support from the donors. They always try to ensure the transparency in procurement wherever they provide the grants. Aid disbursement depends on transparency of the state procurement mechanism," the minister pointed out.
He said Bangladesh could get a
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number of credit supports from IMF and WB by next eight weeks through strengthening the supervisory institutions.
Saifur had left the country for USA on September 10 and returned home after attending the World Bankand the IMF annual meetings in Washington and UNMforld Summit in NewYork
During the Bank-Fund Annual Meetings, Saifur urged the development partners and multilateral donor Sides to provide the poor countries enhanced fund to help them offset the increased oil price shock as well as achieve the Millennium DevelopmentGoals(MDGs).
"All thepanidpant countries in the UN world summit pointed out that the multilateral donor agendes did not disburse adeouate fund, which they had promised earlier in 2002," the finance ministersaid
G-8 countries in the summit have promised again to double their aid to tlte LDCs within the next five years and the countries those are relatively poor and performed well in reform activities, will get the lion share of the grant, hesaid.
Referring to the meetings with the IMFand the WB chiefs during his visit. Saifur said the IMF expressed its satisfaction with theprogressmadeby the Bangladesh government in reform sector.
"IMF is satisfied with our work whatever we have done in reformarea, particularly in the banking reforms. They also suggested us to accelerate the reform programmes in the energy and telecommunication sector,' he said.
The finance minister said the WB also lauded Bangladesh's progress in realising the arrears of electricity and water bills and advised to continue the efforts.
On the sidelines, the finance minister had a meeting with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) president who assured him of taking nis proposal to the IDB Board of Directors for enhanced IDB support to help Bangladesh offset the oil price