Foreign aid info on web from now on

From now on, anyone can access the information on the foreign aid flow to Bangladesh, and where and how the money is used from a web portal.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 26 Oct 2014, 03:36 PM
Updated : 26 Oct 2014, 04:11 PM

Economic Relations Division (ERD) on Sunday launched the home-grown online aid portal -- www.aims.erd.gov.bd-- called Bangladesh Aid Information Management System (Bangladesh AIMS), a web-based software application.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith unveiled the system at the NEC auditorium in Dhaka's Agargaon.

The portal contains the information on which donor agency or country is giving Bangladesh how much aid and where and how the money is being spent.

Muhith hoped that the new initiative would bring transparency in aid utilisation.

“Transparency and accountability in utilisation of foreign aid will be ensured through it. It means the donors will be transparent in extending aid while the government will be careful in the use of the aid,” he said.

The minister said the aid flow to Bangladesh was decreasing day by day that indicated a decline in the country’s dependence on foreign assistance.

He said now foreign aid in Bangladesh stood at 1.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) against 13 percent in 1973.

MA Mannan, State Minister for Finance, and Mashiur Rahman, Economic Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister, were present at the event as the special guests.

ERD Secretary Md Mejbahuddin and representatives of different donor agencies and countries were also present.

The press conference was informed that AIMS was a software application that records and processes information on development activities and related aid flow to a country and helped it to track and manage the foreign assistance.

AIMS captures project‐level information on commitments, disbursements and expenditures by donor, implementer, sector and geographic location.

Any development partner agency willing to share its aid related-information will have to register for entering its data in AIMS.

Seventeen development partners, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Canada, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), USAID and European Union, have so far registered for the system.