Climate-smart growth key to achieve upper mid-income status: WB

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Bangla Tribune Desk
Published : 09:30, Jul 12, 2019 | Updated : 09:31, Jul 12, 2019

The World Bank reaffirmed its continued support to Bangladesh to achieve the country’s vision of reaching an upper-middle income status through ensuring green growth, reports the state owned media agency BSS.
The Washington-based lending agency reaffirmed this as the Bank’s Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva concluded a two-day visit to Bangladesh.
As a co-chair of the Third Executive Meeting of the Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA) in Dhaka on Jul 10, Georgieva commended Bangladesh for its leading role in adaptation and disaster preparedness, despite being among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, said a media release.
“The world can learn from Bangladesh’s adaptation and strong disaster-coping mechanisms. Their approach is working when we compare recent and past natural disasters: Cyclone Gorky in 1970 killed half a million people while last May Cyclone Fani, of similar strength caused less than 10,” said Georgieva.
“But climate change will make the threat of natural disasters more frequent and intense. The World Bank remains committed to help Bangladesh improve resilience and ensure climate-smart growth.” she added.
Georgieva visited a learning center, known as Ananda School that brings poor out-of-school children back to primary education.
The World Bank is supporting the government project that enrolled about 690,000 poor and out-of-school children, half of whom are girls, in Ananda Schools, which in Bengali means “school of joy”.
To cover the poorest slum children, the project has been expanded to 11 city corporations. In Cox’s Bazar area, the program is providing learning opportunities to Rohingya children and helping the dropped-out youth from the host community.
“I am most impressed with the resilience of the people of Bangladesh and their determination for a better future for their children,” added Georgieva.
“This has been the driving force that made Bangladesh become a low-middle income country from being one of the poorest nations at birth only within four decades. The country also showed extreme generosity by providing shelter to about a million Rohingya populations. The World Bank stands by Bangladesh in its journey to an upper-middle income status,” she added.

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