Tripartite meeting on July 3
The Asian Development Bank has identified some 32 projects being supported by its funds in Bangladesh as problematic mainly because of slow progress in implementation and delay in procurement process, officials of Economic Relations Division said.
The Manila-based multilateral lender sought urgent attention from the implementing agencies to address the problems and an updated procurement plan for all those projects, they said.
They said that a tripartite meeting among ADB, ERD and implementing agencies would be held on July 3 in Dhaka to find out ways to solve the problems and to expedite implementation progress.
The meeting will also discuss accelerating disbursement of loans and grants committed by the development partner to Bangladesh, they said.
ERD secretary Abul Kalam Azad told New Age on Thursday that the development partner identified some problems and ERD would ask the implementing agencies about the status of the project implementation.
The meeting would find out effective ways to remove the difficulties and expedite the implementation process, he said.
ADB identified delay in constructing gas pipelines to Khulna power plant and delay in the implementation of projects under Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.
It also said that implementation of Meghnaghat-Aminbazar 400 KV transmission line and Aminbazar-Old Airport 230 KV transmission line needed to be accelerated.
ADB also pointed out slow procurement process, land acquisition and repeated changes of project directors, it was learnt.
The ERD also found implementation of many of the projects quite unsatisfactory.
The ADB has cancelled around $71 million loans for five projects as the government’s project implementing agencies could not spend the money in time, an ERD official said.
He said that the ADB had already informed the ERD about its decision of cancellation of the loans. Of the total amount, $59 million was given as ordinary capital resources (OCR) commonly known as hard-term loan while $11.75 million was given as soft loan.
A total of $30 million loan was cancelled for the gas transmission and development project, $27.50 million for sustainable power sector development project, $6 million for the teaching quality improvement in secondary education project, $3.25 million for skills development project and $4 million for Chittagong port trade facilitation project.
The cancellation process will complete by July, ADB informed the ERD.
About cancellation of $71 million loans, Azad said that some projects had already expired but some amount of loans remained unspent. Those amounts of loans are needed to be cancelled and it was a continuous process, he added.
Currently, there are 60 ongoing projects funded by ADB in the country involving around $5.5 billion.
According to ERD data, the ADB committed to disburse $603 million to Bangladesh from January to June period but till now, it disbursed only $232 million.
Disbursement remained lower because of lower implementation of projects and ADB is also not satisfied with the implementation and disbursement rate, ERD officials said.
-With New Age input
