Business Report :
Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed on Monday stressed the importance of addressing the rural-urban divide to reduce the growing tendency of people to migrate towards cities.
“Take initiatives to ensure the balanced development of the country by increasing the civic facilities in the cities as well as in the villages,” he said at the opening ceremony and startup workshop of Rural and Peri-Urban Housing Finance Project, Phase 2 of Bangladesh House Building Finance Corporation (BHBFC) held at the Ruposhi Bangla Grand Ballroom of Hotel Intercontinental in the capital.
He thanked BHBFC and ISDB authorities for taking Shariah-compliant investment initiatives in building houses in rural and peri-urban areas, and hoped that other institutions would also take initiatives like BHBFC.
This is an Islamic Shariah-based housing investment project of BHBFC with funding from the Islamic Development Bank (ISDB).
The first phase of the project was completed in the month of October 2022 which was taken in the financial year 2018-19. The second phase of the project started with this opening ceremony.
Under the agreement signed between the ISDB and the government of Saudi Arabia, Jeddah on 29 April this year under the supervision of the Financial Institutions Department of the Ministry of Finance, BHBFC received a financial assistance of 270.57 million euros equivalent to Tk3,171 crore for this project.
Of this, an amount equivalent to 67 million euros has already been waived in favour of BHBFC.