Bangladesh receives over $1bn COVID-19 financing from World Bank

Bangladesh has signed three financing agreements totaling $1.04 billion with the World Bank to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and to build resilience to future crises, including vaccination against COVID-19, expand electronic procurement, and accelerate economic recovery.

The $500 million additional financing to the COVID-19 Emergency Response and Pandemic Preparedness Project will help Bangladesh vaccinate about 54 million people against COVID-19. It will help the government procure vaccines; expand storage facilities; and distribute and deploy the vaccines. The project will also continue to provide support to strengthen the national health systems to detect, prevent, and treat COVID-19 cases as well for preparedness for future health emergencies.

The $500 million Private Investment and Digital Entrepreneurship Project will promote and attract about $2 billion direct private investments and strengthen social and environmental standards in selected public and private economic zones and software technology parks. It will develop the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Shilpa Nagar II in Mirsarai-Feni and establish Dhaka’s first digital entrepreneurship hub in the Janata Software Technology Park and turn it into a green building.

And the $40 million Additional Financing to the Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project will help Bangladesh expand electronic government procurement to all public procurement entities with new features to respond to the COVID-19 challenges.