DHAKA, July 25, 2019 (BSS) – Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today
said that the national budget in Bangladesh for the year 2034 will reach
around a trillion US dollar.
“We’ve given over Taka Five lakh crore budget for FY20. By 2034, the
budget for Bangladesh will be a trillion dollar, Insha Allah. You’ll have to
have confidence in it,” he said.
The Finance Minister was addressing the closing ceremony of the two-day
Good Project Implementation Forum organized by the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) held at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC) in the
city.
Referring to the indicative budget amount for 2034, Kamal said, “It’s
gettable and it’s coming up and people will get the benefit of it. It’s a
dream and we all together will materialize it,”
The Finance Minister said Bangladesh is now the 32nd largest economy and
by 2030, the country would be the 24th largest economy in the world.
He said the main area of concern and focus of Bangladesh is to achieve
the targets of SDGs by 2030 and to become a developed country by 2041.
“We’ve already become a middle income country and now we’re a developing
economy alongside India, Brazil, China, Russia, Malaysia and the
Philippines.” he added.
The Finance Minister said growth is now all around in the cities and
villages while the government wants to see every village enjoy the same
facilities that exist in the cities and towns.
He opined that this two-day event would give the government a pathway,
some new ideas and enrich the government to move forward.
Recalling his sufferings during the dengue fever for which he could not
fully deliver the last budget, Kamal prayed to Almighty Allah so that no one
is infected with dengue virus anymore.
The Finance Minister also announced that two top officials of the
awarded projects by ADB would be sent to countries like Vietnam, India and
Singapore to gain more experience.
ADB Country Director Manmohan Parkash gave the address of welcome while
Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Monowar Ahmed delivered the
closing remarks.
ERD Secretary Monowar Ahmed asked the local officials of the awarded
projects to keep this in mind that this is recognition of their good job and
performances as well as to share their good practices with their other
Bangladeshi colleagues.
Earlier, the Finance Minister distributed awards to the best performing
projects and delegates.
ADB this time awarded its good performing project teams in Bangladesh
under 10 different categories as part of efforts to promote efficient project
implementation. SASEC Road Connectivity Project became the best performing or
champions of the champion project by ADB.
Over 300 participants from project executing and implementing agencies
of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka attended the
forum with the theme “Delivering Better Project Outcomes” and shared their
experiences, best practices and lessons learned from implementation of
various projects.
The forum is first such initiative in Bangladesh to promote South-South
Cooperation.
Congratulating the winning project teams, Country Director Manmohan
Parkash said, “Projects must be implemented faster, by adopting the finest
possible quality and compliance standards. Better and faster project
implementation is the key to delivering benefits to the people early, reduce
project costs and sustaining development results”.
Parkash said in the ADO supplement issued couple of days ago, the ADB
has upgraded the economic outlook for Bangladesh from 8 percent in FY19 to a
record 8.1 percent, highest in Asia-Pacific. “This is a remarkable
achievement given that the current global outlook is challenging”.
Further, he said the ADO supplement predicts Bangladesh to sustain the
highest growth in the Asia-Pacific at 8 percent in 2020. “Friends, I call
Bangladesh a ‘Land of Opportunity’. This is because the country has made
tremendous progress in a very short period. Despite a difficult global
economic outlook, Bangladesh continues to progress at a high rate”.
The ADB Country Director said under the bank’s newly approved Strategy
2030, ADB will strengthen its country-focused approach and promote innovative
technologies to deliver integrated solutions, combine expertise across a
range of sectors and themes through a mix of public and private sector
operations, and innovative high impact projects.
In addition to an “overall best project award” projects were also
awarded under “innovation and high technology” “gender mainstreaming”,
“social development and resettlement”, “environmental safeguard compliance”,
“financial management”, “procurement”, “contract awards”, “disbursement”, and
“most improved project” categories.
The best project team recognition program was initiated in 2001 and has
been a regular annual exercise by ADB to promote development effectiveness of
ADB-assisted projects in Bangladesh.