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The government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have reviewed the implementation status and readiness of the lender's assisted projects in Bangladesh to further improve development results.
The ADB Wing Chief of the Economic Relations Division (ERD) Muhammad Alkama Siddiqui and the ADB's Country Director Manmohan Parkash co-chaired the Tripartite Portfolio Review Meeting in Dhaka on Thursday.
The meeting discussed the status of ongoing projects, and readiness of the projects in 2018-2019 pipeline, and prioritised actions to implement projects in a timely manner, the ADB said in a statement.
Sector and project issues including accelerating procurement, land acquisition and improving financial management were discussed, among other matters.
The meeting laid emphasis on mitigating causes of project implementation delays and learning from good performing projects. Senior government officials, project directors, and ADB staffers participated in the meeting.
"The review intends to help further accelerate project implementation and achieve better and faster development results by removing project implementation bottlenecks," the ADB country director said in the statement.
"Procurement Activity Monitoring Tool", a web-based system, developed to help monitor procurement performance of the ADB and government project executing agencies was launched at the event.
ADB's new procurement policy, approved in 2017 to further accelerate the procurement process, was also launched.
ADB's cumulative assistance to Bangladesh stands at around $21 billion in approved loans, grants, and technical assistance.
The Manila-based lender's active portfolio in Bangladesh comprises 51 projects amounting to $8.2 billion, and 27 technical assistance projects amounting at $23.8 million.