Country Director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for Bangladesh Hoe Yun Jeong has said that the Manila-based lending agency wants to scale up further its investment against different projects in Bangladesh in the coming years and thus benefit more people.
“Our aim is ‘crystal clear’. We want to scale up our investments in projects here and also replicate success stories across the nation so that more and more pourashavas and cities, and also people will benefit from the ADB’s support,” he said.
The ADB Country Director was talking to BSS during his visit to various sites of the projects funded by the ADB in Patuakhali and Khulna.
Jeong, however, said that the future funding would depend on the discussions with the government.
When sought his comments on the implementation status of the ADB funded projects in Patuakhali municipality and in Chalna Pourashava in Khulna, he said at first the ADB is very proud to support this investment projects in various Pourashavas through projects and programs.
“The (media) tour gave me a great opportunity to see the real impact that our projects and investments have brought to the cities, to the region and particularly to the people. So, going forward, ADB will continue to work closely with the government and also with the key stakeholders, including the pourashavas and city governments. ADB will provide continuous support to these small investments, but with you know significant development impacts,” he added.
When asked how ADB is devising it’s financing plan to deal with salinity issues in the coastal areas, the ADB Country Director said that under the ongoing Coastal Town Climate Resilience Project, one of the main scopes was to deal with this kind of salinity issues in the coastal town and pourashavas focusing not only on salinity but also to boost economic activities and thus benefitting these local people.
“Yes, obviously our urban sector projects primarily aim to take what we call ‘integrated approach’ across the board which is expected to bring more economic and socio-economic activities. So, that would be good for the overall economic aspects and you know development of the concerned Pourashavas,” he added.
Answering to a question on whether the ADB would focus more on funding such schemes in the coastal areas to deal with various environmental issues, Jeong said, “Yes, obviously, Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate impacts. So, our aim is to provide the continuous support to the pourashavas, particularly in the coastal town areas which are exposed to the climate risks.”
He went on saying, “But, apart from that going forward, we are going to take a little bit integrated approach between urbanization and also industrialization so that the towns particularly pourashavas will serve as growth centers going forward. I think this kind of integrated approach will likely to bring more economic and development impacts to these cities and particularly the residents,”
When asked whether this focus be reflected in the next Country Partnership Framework (CPF) which is under active consideration of the lending agency, the ADB Country Director said that actually the city region development scheme is underway.
“That is the second phase of the project. But, we are already working with the LGED on the next phase of the city region development project. But, we are still in discussion with the government on the potential scope in terms of the geographical areas and the sub-projects to be included in this third phase of the investment project,” added the ADB Country Director.
According to officials at the Economic Relations Division (ERD), the ADB is likely to come up with a hefty support of around $2.5 billion in the next calendar year (2026) against a good number of projects in its continued efforts to strengthen further its relationship with Bangladesh.
“The ADB is likely to provide around $2.5 billion to Bangladesh for funding at least 10 development projects next year,” said a senior official of the Ministry of Finance.
The manila-based multilateral development financier has almost finalised such financing plan in its recently held Country Programming Mission (CPM) for 2026.
Besides, fund will be kept ready as ‘standby fund’ as guardrails against any emergency or priority for Bangladesh beyond the 10 projects.
The ADB usually provides financial support for Bangladesh under its CPS. The current CPS (2021-2025) is going to end in 2025.
According to ERD data, the ADB, the second-largest multilateral development partner for Bangladesh, provided $2.52 billion in the last FY2024-25 and made commitments for $2.0 billion in assistance.
ADB is one of the largest multilateral development partners of Bangladesh. ADB’s current portfolio in Bangladesh stands at around $11.8 billion against 51 ongoing projects.
Since 1973, ADB has provided assistance to the country in sectors like power, energy, local government, transport, education, agriculture, health, water resources, governance etc. with a total of $33.951 billion loans and $571.2 million grants.
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