Donors to Bangladesh: Raise Infrastructure Spending
Bangladesh should raise spending on infrastructure to $12 billion annually, particularly in energy, transport and ports, development partners have told it, Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said on Monday. Bangladesh currently spends just 3 percent of GDP in this sector. About 40 representatives of organisations including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union attended a two-day meeting on development issues in Bangladesh. Muhith told reporters: "Our aim is to raise economic growth to 8.0 percent by 2020 from 6.5 percent now, to become a middle-income country." He said several new projects would be reflected in the budget for the next fiscal year beginning in June 2016.
Santos, Kris Energy to Explore Oil and Gas off Bangladesh
Australian oil and gas company Santos and Singapore-based Kris Energy signed a production-sharing contract (PSC) on Wednesday to explore oil and gas in Bangladeshi waters. State-run Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation, known as Petrobangla, awarded shallow water blocks SS-11 in the Bay of Bengal to the two foreign energy firms. Santos, which in October shut down operation of Bangladesh's only offshore gas field, saying it was not commercially viable, will be the operator of the new project and Kris Energy will join as a co-partner. "It (gas exploration) is a continuous process to make Bangladesh a middle-income country by 2021 and also to become a developed country by 2041," Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith told reporters at the signing ceremony.
