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Govt to seek $1.5b from WB, IMF

Rejaul Karim Byron
The government will seek another $1.5 billion from the World Bank and IMF next fiscal year, officials said yesterday.
The government will have to carry out a new round of reforms in various sectors, including macroeconomy and financial institution governance, to get the loan.
Of the amount, $500 million may come from the WB as budget support, while the International Monetary Fund will give the rest.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith disclosed the plan to reporters after a meeting with a visiting IMF mission at his secretariat yesterday.
Discussions on another loan pro-
posal will begin after the government gets the last instalment of a $ 1 billion IMF loan under its extended credit facility (ECF) next year, he said.
Though the minister did not give an exaa figure about the new credit programme of the IMF, finance ministry officials said it is likely to be around $1 billion.
The IMF mission proposed to extend the ongoing ECF programme by another year, but Muhith told them that the government wants it to end in time and start a new one.
The IMF mission agreed to offer a new loan, the minister said, adding: "They are interested. In faa, they wanted to start talks on it now."
However, Muhith said discussions on the new loan may start in May next
year as the government now awaits a pay commission report, which will give an estimate of expenditure on salary and benefits of public servants.
The new pay commission will submit the report in December and its implementation is related largely to the national budget.
For the new IMF programme, the government will have to focus on VAT reforms, including the implementation of the new VAT law, and budgetary reforms, Muhith said.
The government has a number of plans for budgetary reforms, he said, adding that the IMF mission has no concern other than VAT reforms for releasing the next instalment of the ECF loan.
The VAT law was scheduled to be implemented in July 2015, but the minister informed the mission that it cannot be implemented before 2016, and the IMF team has agreed to the plan. The IMF mission, however, asked the government to prepare a "work plan" to implement the VAT law, Muhith said.
The IMF also gave the government a fresh deadline to install software for VAT collection by June next year. The finance minister said they would discuss the issue of $500 million budget support from the WB on the sidelines of the WB-IMF annual meeting in Washington next month.
Muhith expects the agreement to be signed this fiscal year and the amount may be released next fiscal year.
Bangladesh got budget support worth $200 million from the WB last in 2008. During the Awami League government's last tenure, they wanted budget support from the WB, but did not get it, as the global lender had various reservations about governance-related issues.