The World Bank wants the government to probe alleged irregularities in the appointment of a consultant for the Padma Bridge project, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said yesterday.

The government would soon decide on

whether an investigation will be conducted into the allegation, Muhith told journalists at the cabinet division. He was answering their queries on the snags in the WB's financing for the project.

Quoting Muhith, the news agency Reuters reported that the WB had

suspended its $1.2 billion credit to Bangladesh for the project until such time as the government resolved the issue of alleged irregularities in the appointment of the consultant for the project.

The Daily Star could not, however, confirm the news despite repeated attempts to do so.

The finance minister returned home on Saturday after a three-week visit to the United States, where he attended the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He also held talks with high-level WB officials in Washington.

Preferring anonymity, a finance ministry official said Muhith last night had a meeting with the prime minister to discuss the crisis over WB's funding for the project.

Muhith is expected to brief journalists on the matter today.

The minister said yesterday that even if the government decided to investigate the allegations of irregularities, it could not wait until the probe was completed.

Asked whether the government was looking for other financiers, Muhith replied in the negative.

He said $1.2 billion was a big amount and the government needed the money to implement the project.

On the alleged irregularities in the appointment of the consultant for the project, the minister said many quarters raised corruption allegations, but in most cases they turned out to have been baseless. Pointing to two earlier corruption allegations involving the project, the minister noted that neither of those had turned out to be true.

Meanwhile, a parliamentary committee has criticised the World Bank for raising the question of irregularities involving the project "on the basis of an e-mail from an unidentified source."

The parliamentary standing committee on the communications ministry had checked all tender documents of the project but could not find any instance of irregularity or corruption, said committee chief Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the Jatiya । SangsadBhaban.

“We found that the World Bank had raised the allegation of corruption on the basis of an e-mail to the organisation from an unidentified source,” said Rahman, a lawmaker of the ruling party.