Virtual Roundtable: Increasing access to finance for water & sanitation (WASH) in Bangladesh

On Wednesday November 24, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands of Dhaka, in partnership with the FINISH Mondial Bangladesh programme and Aqua for All, is holding a virtual roundtable ‘Increasing access to finance for water & sanitation (WASH) in Bangladesh’.

Bangladesh has made significant progress to improve access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene services over the past two decades. Open defecation rates are reduced to under one percent. However, that doesn't mean that everybody enjoys a safely managed toilet facility. About a 100 million people are using unimproved facilities, that are either shared, unhygienic or without  safe treatment of the human waste. To protect people and the country from water-borne diseases and environmental degradation, financial inclusion and more investments are needed.

This seminar will bring together Bangladeshi financial institutions to share experiences with loans to households and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Bangladesh’s WASH sector. In particular, the participants will explore what is needed to improve and accelerate lending to households and private companies in the sector in order to ensure access to water and achieve safe sanitation for all. In addition, the following topics will be discussed:

• Opportunities and barriers to financing the water and sanitation sector as well as increasing interest of impact investors;
• Learning from Bangladeshi (micro) finance institutions (MFIs) that are lending for WASH;
• PKSF/Government of Bangladesh initiatives that facilitate access to finance for WASH.