Political unrest hampers project works
ADP implementation during July-November period of the current fiscal year stood at Tk 13,156 crore or 20 per cent of the total outlay earmarked in the budget, compared with 25 per cent utilised during the same period of the previous fiscal year. Political instability and capacity constraints in implementing development projects are two major reasons behind the dismal situation, officials said.
Of the amount, Tk 8,985 crore was spent from domestic sources, while the remaining Tk 4,171 crore from lenders as project aids, according to official figure of the planning ministry.
The budget for 2013-14 fiscal year earmarked Tk 65,872 crore for annual development programme.
‘The development activities of the government were severely hampered due to long-running political programmes and repeated shutdowns of the opposition political parties,’ Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam, secretary, planning division under the ministry of planning, told New Age on Monday.
The disbursement of fund depends on completion of works, he said, pointing to slow activities of different development projects due to lack of benign environment.
Ten major ministries of the government that received Tk 54,489.28 crore or 74 per cent of the total allocation of the ADP, spent Tk 10,347.61 crore or 19 per cent of their allocation during the period, reveals the data of Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the ministry.
The local government division spent 31 per cent of its allocation in the first five months followed by ministry of primary and mass education with 30 per cent, said the ministry data.
In contrast, the implementation in the other eight big ministries and divisions, such as the power division, bridge division, energy and mineral resources division, health and family welfare ministry and the roads division ranges from 2 per cent to 25 per cent.
The bridges division, which got the third highest allocation in the ADP due to the Padma Bridge project, spent only 2 per cent of its allotment.
The health ministry continued with its poor implementation from last fiscal year; in the first five months it could use only 17 per cent of its allocation.
The roads division implemented 20 per cent of its share, due to no significant progress in many big projects like the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway project.
Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam, however, said the ADP implementation generally marks unsatisfactory result during the first four-five months, which normally picks from January.
The multilateral lending agencies like World Bank have long been pressing the government to improve its project implementation capacity and public investment management to ensure a satisfactory outlook in ADP implementation.
-With New Age input
