Closed-door parley sans outcome

What transpired in a closed-door meeting between high officials of Bangladesh government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) representatives over release of the stalled fourth and fifth tranches of its loan remained cloaked.

In fact, the FE correspondents reached almost all the Bangladeshi participants in the meeting. However, they kept tightlipped.

"…sorry…cannot discuss," Finance Secretary Md Khairuzzaman Mozumder responded in a WhatsApp massage.

A Bangladesh Ban official told the FE that the differences could not be narrowed. "Discussions will continue over it."

To review the country's progress in fulfilling the lender's conditions binding the credit package, an IMF mission arrived in Dhaka in the first week of last month and held a number of discussions with their Bangladeshi counterparts. But the more-than-a-week-long visit ended without an agreement as both sides did not reach a consensus over twin issues --a more flexible exchange regime and significantly expanding the tax-GDP ratio in the country.

As both sides failed to reach a consensus in Dhaka, the discussion was extended to the American capital city of Washington where the Spring Meetings were held from April 22, 2025.

In meetings on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC, the Bangladeshi delegation convinced the IMF to relax an ambitious tax-revenue-mobilisation target set by the Fund for the National Board of Revenue (NBR), but the lender stuck to its guns over more flexible dollar-taka exchange rates.

The IMF's staff-level agreement with Bangladesh on disbursement of $1.3 billion under its $4.70-billion lending package for stabilising the country's macroeconomic situation stays held in abeyance.

Asked, Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed told the FE, "A decision is yet to come on this issue."

The BB officials will have further meeting with the IMF officials on this issue Tuesday.

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