The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Bangladesh yesterday signed a loan agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for financing a US dollar 170 million project on good governance and anti-graft campaign as part of the government's reform initiatives.

Secretary of the Economic Relations Division (ERD) Mohammad Aminul Islam Bhuiyan signed the agreement with ADB's country director Hua Du for the government's "Good Governance Programme" under which the bank is to offer an amount of 150 million dollars from its concessional loan window as a budgetary support.

The rest of the amount is expected to come from other development partners on governance, anti-corruption reforms and judiciary support, and the government itself, officials said.

The programme aims at strengthening the anti-graft campaign, transparency and accountability of the judiciary, particularly on its role in the anti-corruption agenda and bring good governance and anti-corruption initiatives into the mainstream within selected sectoral level agencies to enhance their effectiveness.

It is also intended to bring good governance and anti- corruption initiatives into the mainstream within selected sectoral level agencies to enhance their effectiveness and strengthen the ongoing consensus building on good governance, integrity and anti-corruption reforms and support judicial reforms with a focus on the performance.

The soft-term loan will mature in 24 years, including a grace period of eight years, with an interest charge of one percent during the grace period and 1.5 percent thereafter while the loan proceeds were expected to be utilised over a period of four years from the date of effectiveness, roughly up to September 2011.

A number of other senior officials of concerned ministries and agencies of the government, the Danish embassy, which is to offer extra support to the programme, and the ADB witnessed the signing of the agreement.

ADB officials said they offered Bangladesh an amount of 8.76 billion US dollars as loans since the country became its member in 1973 while its development assistances mainly focused on power, energy, local governance, communications and transport, education, agriculture, water resources and governance sectors.