Bongo-news Dotkom:

Bangladesh now belongs to the lower middle-income country bracket, so the cost of loans taken by the country will rise. In other words, interest rates will be higher.
World Bank’s Senior Vice-President for Operations, Kyle Peters, made the statement after a meeting with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in Dhaka on Wednesday.
He also said that the rate of interest for Bangladesh against loans from the WB will rise from the existing 0.75%; the existing 40-year grace period will also be lower now because of the improvement in status.
Kyle Peters arrived in Dhaka on Tuesday to enlarge the traditional partnership between Bangladesh and the World Bank.
The government, however, is not in favor of an immediate increase and requested that the revision be done five years hence, according to Finance Minister AMA Abdul Muhith.
Bangladesh will not attain United Nation’s permanent certification before 20185, so that the rate of interest against loans from the global lender would not rise until then.
“It is true that in the World Bank’s assessment, we have already risen to the status of a lower-middle-income country. That is probably why the international agencies are eager to raise their interest rates.
“But it will be another few years before we are officially recognized by the UN as a lower-middle-income country. That is why we want the World Bank and JICA to hike their interest rates some years later.”
“In future, we will have to pay a higher interest rate to get loans because they want to increase the service charge right now. But our government does not want that right now. We want the increase to be made five to six years later,” he added.
JICA, too, wants a increase in the interest rate, Muhith said.
“We have told them not to raise the rate before 2018,” he said.
In June, a World Bank report - based on the Atlas method calculation - declared that Bangladesh had transitioned from a lower-income country to a lower middle income country, as the Bank using the Atlas method.

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