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soft loans to help create employment by expanding non-urban small and
medium enterprises (SMEs). To this end, an agreement was signed
yesterday between the government of Bangladesh and the lending
agency in Dhaka, according to a press release. M Musharraf Hossain
Bhuiyan, secretary of Economic Relations Division in the finance
ministry, and Nurul Huda, officer-in-charge of ADB's Bangladesh
Resident Mission, sealed the deal on behalf of their respective
sides. "The project will boost the number and size of commercially
viable enterprises, and thus increase access to credit and help
expand SMEs," said Huda. The ministry is the executing agency and
Bangladesh Bank will be the implementing agency for the project,
completion of which is due by September 2012. The project will also
support an increase in female-led SMEs, which are set to receive a
minimum 15 percent of the project's credit facility. A linked
technical assistance grant of $5 ,00 ,000 , funded by the
Australia-ADB South Asia Development Partnership Facility, will be
used to improve the financial skills and capacities of women
entrepreneurs and participating financial institutions (PFIs), the ADB
said. Bangladesh government will contribute $19 million, PFIs $19
million, and SMEs about $12.7 million for the project cost of $ 126.7
million. The project is expected to generate 1.46 million
employments in the SME sector and will benefit more than 66 ,000
SMEs across the country, primarily in rural and non-urban areas
during 2009-2012.
