The Economic Relations Department (ERD) released the information on Sunday.
Bangladesh has paid 1.05 billion dollars in foreign debt interest during the July-March quarter (nine months) of the fiscal year 2023-24.
Which is 117 percent more than the same period of the previous year. Bangladesh paid $485 million in interest during the same period last year.
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The Economic Relations Department (ERD) released the information on Sunday.
At the same time, principal repayments rose 22 percent annually to $1.5 billion.
In all, debt repayments rose 49 percent to $2.57 billion in the July-March quarter of FY2024.
Mainly for financing big infrastructure projects, the debt repayment pressure is increasing with the government borrowing. These projects include bilaterally and multilaterally funded Dhaka Metrorail, Matarbari Coal Power Plant and Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant.
Meanwhile, as of December 2023, the amount of foreign debt of the Bangladesh government is 79.6 billion dollars. This amount is more than 13.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the fiscal year 2022-23.
In recent years, the government has borrowed huge sums of money from multilateral organizations. The loan was taken to help the economy cope with the crisis caused by the global economic crisis after the Corona pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to government data, Bangladesh paid $935 million in interest payments in fiscal year 2023, almost double the $491 million it paid a year ago.
According to the latest data from the Economic Relations Department (ERD), aggregate commitments of foreign lenders rose 135 percent year-on-year to $7.2 billion during July-March 2024 fiscal year.
