BD gets no fresh aid pledges from its 3 bilateral donors for two fiscals

Bangladesh has not received any fresh commitments of aid from its three important bilateral development partners, including China and India, for the last two consecutive fiscal years, causing a blow to its overall external aid pledges, officials have said.

Although China, Bangladesh's the second largest bilateral development partner, India and Russia had disbursed some assistance against their previous commitments, they had not inked any aid deal in the last two fiscal years (FY) 2024-25 and FY2024 with Bangladesh, Economic Relations Division (ERD) data revealed.

Despite making the repeated appeals for aid supports by Bangladesh government to the three donors, especially to China over the last couple of years against necessary and priority development projects, they had not enter any aid deal for the pipeline projects, said a senior ERD official.

Such empty aid commitments from three important partners had lowered the volume of Bangladesh's overall aid pledges from multilateral and bilateral development partners (DPs) by $2.415 billion to $8.32 billion in the last fiscal, official figures showed.

The disbursement of foreign aid also saw a downward trend in the FY2025 with the external development partners providing $8.568 billion worth of aid, $1.715 billion down from that of the FY2024.

According to the ERD, China has not made any fresh pledge for aid during the last 24 months-- from July 2023 to June 2025, although Bangladesh government had made appeals several occasions to its 2nd largest bilateral lender for the loans and grants.

In last fiscal year, China disbursed $ 414.70 million worth of assistance but it had not confirmed any fresh loan for the pipeline projects, officials said, adding that the country had not made any aid commitment also in the FY2024.

In the FY'2023, the foreign aid commitment from Beijing was also very poor as it confirmed only $276.25 million worth of aid.

In the FY2021, China pledged $1.126 billion for constructing the Dhaka-Ashulia elevated expressway, according to official figures.

"We have been requesting China over the last few years for providing funds for our priority projects. We sent 27 projects proposal to Beijing for its the funding. But It had not made any fresh aid commitment to Bangladesh last fiscal," said a senior ERD official.

He further said: "We are still trying to get confirmation of loans over the last couple of years from Beijing for three to four priority projects.

India, which emerged as one of the major bilateral donors of Bangladesh with its commitment of $1.0 billion worth of LoC in 2010, had not made any fresh assistance available for Bangladesh over the last two consecutive years.

Indian government confirmed $4.5 billion worth of LoC-II in 2016 and $2.0 billion of LoC-III in 2017 while it did not make any fresh aid pledge for Bangladesh government since then.

Moreover, India has cut its aid allocations for Bangladesh by 40 per cent in its newly announced national budget for the fiscal year (FY) 2024-25 as it has trimmed down its overall allocations.