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The World Bank (WB) Executive Board has endorsed Bangladesh's poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP), official sources said Sunday, reports BDNEWS.
"Almost all the Executive Directors of the WB Board congratulated the Government of Bangladesh for the quality of the preparation process of the National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (NSAPR) and its contents," Embassy of Bangladesh in Washington DC said in a letter to the Secretary of Economic Relations Division (ERD).
The letter quoted Zakir Ahmed khan, former finance secretary and an alternative executive director of the WB, to inform ERD of the approval of PRSP.
The PRSP is an essential document for countries requiring assistance from multilateral donor agencies, such as World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The process of drafting this document began in 2003.
The government on October 16, 2005 approved the final document titled "Unlocking the potential: National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction" aimed at reducing poverty by 3.3 percent a year instead of the current target of 1.5 percent a year to halve the country's overall poverty level by 2015.
"After a lively and detailed discussion, WB's executive board unanimously approved Bangladesh's poverty reduction strategies," a senior ERD official told the news agency Sunday.
He hoped the WB's unanimous endorsement of the document would help the government to get increased external assistance from different donor agencies and countries, including the WB.
"We need support from the development partners to implement the PRSP," an official of the General Economic Division (GED) of the Planning Commission told the news agency.
Generating employment, improving nutritional status, upgrading primary, secondary and vocational education, establishing good governance, improving maternal health, ensuring sanitation and safe drinking water, combating terrorism and monitoring are the agenda set out in the PRSP.
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