IMF team holds meeting with Energy Division

A team of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held a meeting with Energy and Mineral Resources Division officials on Sunday.

According to official sources, the IMF team came to the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources in the afternoon and discussed with the senior officials of the Energy and Mineral Resources Division.

Energy Secretary Nurul Alam led the Energy and Mineral Resources Division in the meeting with the IMF team.

A team from the IMF, led by Rahul Anand, Mission Chief for Bangladesh, arrived in Dhaka on 4 October to discuss the terms of a $4.5 billion loan to Bangladesh.

The team is scheduled to leave Bangladesh on 19 October after its series of meetings with different ministries and their subordinate bodies and also with the central bank officials to discuss the release of the second tranche of the total loan of $4.7 billion of which the first tranche was already released.

The second tranche is expected to be released in November this year.

Official sources said the IMF team discussed various issues in this sector, including subsidies in the energy sector, automatic price determination of petroleum fuels in coordination with the global market, and imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Sources said while making the decision to provide a $4.7 billion loan to Bangladesh, the IMF tagged a number of conditions including taking measures for automatic price adjustment of petroleum fuels maintaining coordination with the global market price so that the government would not incur loss.

But so far, no progress has been made in this regard. But the Energy Division officials informed the IMF that they have been working on the issue.