The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide $338 million to Bangladesh for manufacturing vaccines to give people protection against various deadly diseases, reports BSS.

ADB Country Director Edimon Ginting shared this information at a meeting with Planning Minister MA Mannan at the latter's office in the capital on Wednesday.

He said with the passage of time, many new diseases and viruses can attack mankind for which there is a need to take early preparations.

For this, the project is being framed, he added.

Mannan said that the ADB in the meeting offered a $338 million loan for the project of which the half would be in low interest rate while the interest rate for the rest would be regular.

The minister said that the ADB has requested the government to speedily approve the project. In response, he assured for providing sincere efforts to approve the project at the earliest.

Edimon Ginting said that this initiative for financing the project for manufacturing vaccines was taken to help Bangladesh reduce the dependency on vaccine imports and facilitate more production in the country.

The total cost of the project is around $351 million, he said.

Ginting also informed that the ADB committed $3.5 billion financing to Bangladesh in the current fiscal year of which around $2 billion would be concessional while the rest of $1.5 billion would be regular.

Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul