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Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has brushed aside the claim that Dhaka is falling into a Chinese "debt trap", reported Xinhua.
Momen, while speaking to the media after attending a programme in Dhaka on Saturday, said that China's loans to Bangladesh only comprise a small fraction of the country's external debt. The Minister also conveyed that the "debt trap concern" was an apparent bid to smear China's Belt and Road Initiative and deter the cooperation between Beijing and Dhaka or other countries in the region and beyond, according to Xinhua. Referring to the debt-to-GDP ratio, the Minister said that Bangladesh's total debt is just over 15 per cent or about 16 per cent. A country is trapped into debt when its loans are nearly 40 per cent of its GDP, said Momen. Bangladesh so far borrowed the most from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund, said Momen, adding that the Chinese loan is not even about five per cent of our total amount of borrowing money from foreign sources. It came after Momen had slammed the US sanctions on officials of the country's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) over alleged rights abuse, saying the move was "very unfortunate" and "not fact-based". (ANI)
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