The Bangladeshi government on Sunday signed a credit agreement worth US$81 million with World Bank to develop higher education in the country.

According to a press release of the World Bank (WB) released here on Sunday, the credit from the International Development Association, the WB's concessionary arm, has 40 years to maturity, including a 10-year grace period and carries a service charge of 0.75 percent.

Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, secretary of Bangladesh's Economic Relations Division under Finance Ministry, and Zhu Xian, World Bank Country Director in Bangladesh, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides in Dhaka on Sunday, it said.

The WB press release said the Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project will support both innovation and accountability within public and private universities and enhance the technical and institutional capacity of the higher education sector in Bangladesh.

The project's main component is to establish an environment to stimulate teaching, improve learning, and boost research in universities, and introduce an efficient instrument for the allocation of public funds to universities, it said.

The project also aims to integrate Bangladesh's universities in the globalized world of knowledge, it said.

In this regard, the project will establish a Bangladesh Research and Education Network, a high performance Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) network, which will enable academicians, scientists, and researchers to connect and communicate with their peers within the country and globally.