The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a USD 250 million policy-based loans to Bangladesh to help finance reforms, the bank said in a release.

The loan would help improve the inclusiveness and responsiveness of Bangladesh’s social development and resilience programs.

Noting that Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty over the past two decades from 48.9 percent in 2000 to 20.5 percent in 2019, ADB, however, said a considerable number of people continue to live at a subsistence level.

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected the socio-economic situation of Bangladesh with the country’s gross domestic product declining to an estimated 5.2 percent in fiscal 2020 from 8.2 percent in 2019.

“Enhancing social protection support is critical to cushioning the effects of the pandemic,” said ADB Senior Social Sector Specialist for South Asia Hiroko Uchimura-Shiroishi.

According to the release, the Strengthening Social Resilience Program will include institutional and policy reforms to address cross-sector issues of social development in Bangladesh.

These include improving the coverage and efficiency of the social protection system through improving the administrative efficiency of social protection management.

The program will reach out to vulnerable women by increasing the coverage of both the old age allowance for women over 62 and the allowance for widowed, deserted and destitute women in 150 sub-districts.

Other reforms include promoting the use of mobile financial services and simplifying identification and documentation requirements for opening a bank account and broadening the scope of social protection from mere poverty relief to life cycle social and health responses, including social insurance system.

The ADB will also provide a technical assistance grant to support program implementation, policy analyses and capacity development for social development-related ministries.

The technical assistance is estimated to cost USD 1.2 million which will be financed on a grant basis by the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction.

(SAM)