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The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday approved US$50 million loan to Bangladesh for bankrolling some public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects.
The ADB financing will help implement the PPP infrastructure subprojects developed by the government agencies.
The financial intermediary loan will strengthen the capacity of the Bangladesh Infrastructure Finance Fund Limited (BIFFL), which were established by the government to provide long-term local-currency debt financing for infrastructure projects.
The Manila-based lender has been a long-standing partner to support BIFFL for promoting the PPP programme and develop its pipeline projects.
According to ADB, it assisted the government to develop the PPP Act and an institutional framework for PPPs in addition to supporting the country’s priority sectors as a transaction advisor.
The lender further said that it would provide $650,000 technical assistance as a grant from its Financial Sector Development Partnership Special Fund to support BIFFL for reviewing and updating corporate strategy as well as assessing and improving the capacity to manage environmental and social safeguards and project implementation.
“The assistance will help strengthen government capacity to develop PPP infrastructure projects and catalyse greater private sector infrastructure investments,” said Dongdong Zhang, ADB’s Principal Financial Sector Specialist.
“As the country starts to recover from the severe impacts of the pandemic, PPP will emerge as an important tool to leverage private sector resources to develop infrastructure and create jobs,” he said.