ADB-Bangladesh Partnership Strategy

Bangladesh has achieved sustained growth of over 6% per year since Fiscal Year 2007. Poverty has halved since 2000, meeting an important Millennium Development Goal target. The gender gap has narrowed, and the country has made progress in providing access to health and basic social services.

The major challenges facing Bangladesh now include:

• accelerating the annual rate of growth to 7% and above to move closer to upper middle-income status,
• diversifying the economic base and creating new sources of growth,
• making growth more inclusive and reducing poverty by creating jobs and supporting rural development,
• increasing transparency and accountability by addressing institutional and policy weaknesses, and
• reducing vulnerabilities to environmental degradation and climate change.

Strategic objectives and priorities

ADB will adopt a broad-based approach in order to respond flexibly to the needs and demand of Bangladesh over the country partnership strategy (CPS) period, 2016-2020.

ADB assistance is strongly aligned with the Bangladesh government’s Vision 2021 and its Seventh Five-Year Plan, which lays out a roadmap for higher, sustainable and inclusive growth.

Based on ADB’s core strengths, CPS 2016-2020 will help ease infrastructure constraints, boost human capital, promote economic corridor development, improve rural livelihoods, and provide climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure and services. The CPS will promote investment and growth in specific geographical areas to ensure a more integrated and higher impact.

ADB will increase public- and private-sector lending to Bangladesh to $8.0 billion for 2016 through 2020 to help the country build the infrastructure and skills needed for a strong, diversified economy and to strengthen trade links within the region.

ADB will help the development of economic corridors to position Bangladesh well in regional and global value chains. The CPS supports further development of the Dhaka-Chittagong industrial artery, extending to Cox’s Bazar in the southeastern part of the country, and development of the southwest economic corridor from Dhaka.

The country operations business plan (COBP), 2019–2021 for Bangladesh updates COBP, 2018–2020. It is consistent with the strategic priorities of the ADB country partnership strategy, 2016–2020 for Bangladesh, the government’s Seventh Five-Year Plan (FY2016–FY2020), and ADB’s Strategy 2030. The COBP focuses on the country partnership strategy’s five priority investment areas: (i) easing infrastructure constraints, (ii) improving human capital, (iii) promoting economic corridor development, (iv) improving rural livelihoods, and (v) providing climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure and services.

The 2019–2021 program will maintain operations in the following sectors: energy (23.5%); transport (21.9%); water and other urban infrastructure and services (21.4%); agriculture, natural resources, and rural development (13.0%); education (12.8%); and finance and public sector management (7.4%).