
A USD525,000 grant that aims to build the institutional capacity of Bangladesh’s Eastern Bank PLC (EBL) to prepare sustainable infrastructure financing was approved by the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) Governing Committee during its meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 17 December. The project will be implemented by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
The MCDF grant will fund activities to improve EBL’s environmental and social management system (ESMS) and practices, including a project-level grievance redress mechanism. The enhanced ESMS will be the first infrastructure-focused (non-sovereign backed financing USD50 million) on-lending facility provided to EBL by a multilateral development bank.
The goal is to enable EBL to meet AIIB and other International Financial Institution (IFI) standards in areas such as biodiversity impact management and environmental and social (E&S) assessment and better manage E&S risks and impacts.
The enhanced ESMS and practices will help EBL increase its lending portfolio in private sector infrastructure investment, with the potential to open a pipeline of renewable energy and telecommunications sub-projects critical to strengthening Bangladesh’s domestic and cross-border connectivity.
The MCDF grant will support efforts to inform EBL how to ensure that sub-projects are economically viable, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.
Among them include a comprehensive gap analysis and assessment report, work to align EBL’s ESMS with AIIB’s and other IFIs’ standards, and the development and partial implementation of an E&S capacity building plan.
The MCDF grant will also provide a case study to help the banking industry in Bangladesh pursue comparable institutional capacity building approaches.
Contact
David Hendrickson
Senior Communications Officer
Mobile: +86 185 0114 6758
david.hendrickson@themcdf.org



