A mission of the World Bank (WB) will arrive in Dhaka early February for a review of recent fiscal and current expenditures of the government, according to WB sources.
The public expenditure review (PER) by the WB mission will take place on February 2-6.
Simon Davies (task team leader) will be joined by Salman Zaidi (lead economist), Zahid Hussain (lead economist), Muhammed Waheed (senior economist) and Nadeem Rizwan during the review mission.
The team will meet with the officials of the ministries of finance (MoF) and planning as well as local stakeholders, reports The Financial Express.
They will proceed first by taking a global perspective of the expenditure patterns in Bangladesh.
“This will help understand the recent trends, policy priorities and expenditure efficiencies, as well as identify future areas of analyses. This is expected to be completed in June next,” sources added.
At the second stage the mission will undertake more focused analysis. Work will begin on the health and education sectors and the team will identify other areas which require additional focus.
The last WB PER group for Bangladesh was completed in 2010 on two sections. The first section included an overview of public expenditure trends, including priority areas for both current and capital expenditures; a debt-sustainability analysis, budget performance indicators and public expenditure efficiency, according to the WB sources.
The second stage included detailed analyses of expenditures in health, education, transport, energy and agriculture.
