Many completed projects yet to benefit people
The spending of the annual development programme fund may hit a record 54 per cent in July-March when the figure is officially released in the next few days but many of the completed development projects have failed to start their operations due to a lack of administrative capacity of the government.
Planning ministry officials said they estimated that the expenditure might have crossed 10 per cent of the ADP in March taking the overall spending to 54 per cent in July-March due to a spending spree in the final year of the government’s tenure.
‘Though the expenditure by the line ministries and agencies has increased sharply from the second half of this fiscal year, there is a question about the quality and actual outcome of the public expenditure,’ said an official of the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division.
The chairman of the parliamentary committee on government assurance, Ali Asharf, admitted that although the ADP expenditure was rising, the actual outcome of the development initiatives was not satisfactory.
‘It is happening so because of a lack of skilled manpower in the administration and a lack of capacity of the government,’ he told New Age on Monday.
He said that a good number of infrastructures were developed in last few years in the country but some of those institutions could not start operations to provide services to people.
IMED officials said that progress of the ADP implementation in July-March period was 45, 45, 44 and 41 per cent in 2011-12, 2010-11, 2009-10 and 2008-9 respectively.
Recently an IMED team visited some service-oriented projects including hospitals to see the real development pattern under the ADP.
‘In some cases we have become worried after seeing the actual outcome of the development projects. In the last three or four years a lot of infrastructures were built in the country. But, mass people are yet to get services from that development works,’ said the IMED official.
‘A 500-bed hospital in Kurmitola, Dhaka was completed. But, it has not started to give health services to people yet. Another 500-bed hospital in Mugda remains in the same condition,’ the IMED official said.
‘A lot of community clinics were set up in the country in the last few years. But, most of the clinics remain non-operational and these are not giving any health services to people,’ the IMED official said adding that similarly a good number of new schools recruited adequate number of teachers but the schools do not have any students yet.’
He said that quality expenditure by the government also increased in the current fiscal year compared with that in the past few years as the government and development partners strengthened their monitoring of the development works.
Sixty meetings of the parliamentary assurance committee were held in the last three years to review the government’s performance to implement the ADP and the meetings also helped to increase the quality expenditure of the ADP, he said.
The assurance committee and the IMED are working together to evaluate the progress of the ADP, he added.
-With New Age input
