Finance
Finance Discounts decreased, debt repayment pressure increased: ERD
Dhaka, Dec 29: The implementation of the country's development projects is slow. The implementation of the annual development programme (ADP) of the government is not going away. The long-standing slowdown has been further compounded by political unrest around the national elections. As a result, the lowest ADP in the last eight fiscal years was implemented in the first five months (July-November) of the current (2023-24) financial year.
This has had an impact on foreign debt relief. In comparison to the 2022-23 fiscal year, the foreign loan disbursement has decreased by 15.37 percent in the first five months of the current fiscal year. Despite the decrease in the amount of money, the pressure of repayment of debt with interest and principal has increased.
At this time, the debt has to be paid more than 34 percent compared to the previous financial year. However, the commitment of donor agencies to give loans has increased. In the current fiscal year, loan commitments have increased by 92.12 percent more than the previous fiscal year.
These facts have emerged in the latest report of the Economic Relations Division (ERD). On Thursday, ERD released the data on foreign loan waiver for the first five months (July-November) of the current financial year. In the five months of the current (2023-24) fiscal year, foreign remittances have reached 211 crore 70 lakh dollars. In the same period of the last financial year, the deduction was 246 crore 24 lakh dollars. In other words, in the first five months of the current financial year, the donor organizations have released 35 crore 14 lakh dollars less than the last year.
The loan repayment pressure has increased even though the loan is less. In the five months of the current fiscal year, the government has repaid foreign debt with principal and interest amounting to 1,464,480,000 dollars. Where the amount of interest is 23 crore 76 lakh and original 64 crore 27 lakh dollars. During the same period of the last financial year, the debt had to be paid 843 crore 7 lakh dollars. That is, 621 crore 40 dollars more debt had to be paid in the course of the year. However, foreign loan commitments have increased significantly. In the first five months of the last financial year (2022-23), the government received only 46 crore 13 lakh dollars in foreign loan commitments. There, 585 crore 91 lakh dollars have been pledged till November of the current financial year. That is, loan commitments increased by 539 crore 78 lakh dollars during the year.
