China to provide up to $25b: Muhith

China is likely to provide Bangladesh up to $25 billion for the projects it has committed, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said yesterday.

“It's somewhere between $20 billion to $25 billion,” Muhith told a meeting with British-Bangladeshis at his secretariat office.

The actual amount that China will provide cannot be put definitively yet. “They are calculating it now. The figure can be said after a few days,” Muhith added.

During Chinese President Xi Jinping's two-day visit to Bangladesh earlier this month, Dhaka and Beijing signed agreements for 34 projects and programmes. The total amount to be provided was not disclosed by either party.

As per the primary estimate of Bangladesh, the amount of Chinese soft loans would be in the neighbourhood of $24.45 billion.

Bangladesh utilises foreign aid in a very conservative way, so the country's debt burden is still very low, around $24 billion, Muhith said.

The government's projection is that the country can borrow another $20 billion to $30 billion by 2024.

The government will also borrow from the World Bank. Last year, the country borrowed about $1.2 billion from the Washington-based multilateral lender.

The finance minister said, in next three years he expects to get $1.8 billion assistance from the WB a year.