The government agencies and the ministries continued to struggle with the problem of slow implementation of the annual development programme as they could implement only 70 per cent of the ADP in the 11 months of the current financial year.
The 54 development project implementing agencies and ministries will have to implement remaining 30 per cent of the revised ADP in just one month left for the FY 2011-2012, economists and officials said.
They said that the trend created a risk to full implementation of the revised ADP and so the implementing agencies might take some tricks including higher disbursement against uncompleted works to show higher implementation rate at the end of the year.
The revised ADP implementation rate was only 55 per cent in the first 10 months of this financial year and the rate jumped to 70 per cent in the next one month.
‘The government disburses higher amount of resources in the closing month of a financial year to show implementation rate healthy though the development works remain incomplete, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies research director Zaid Bakht told New Age on Thursday.
The last minute expenditure will not only lead to waste of public money and give way to corruption; it would also have a negative impact on the quality of works, he said.
Implementation, monitoring and evaluation division data released on Thursday showed that the government agencies could spend only Tk 28,553 crore or 70 per cent of the revised ADP during July-May, 2 per cent lower than that of the previous year.
In July-May of the previous financial year, the ADP implementation rate was 72 per cent or Tk 25,848 crore in expenditure.
Of the total expenditure, the share of government funding was Tk 19,511 crore or 75 per cent and the share of foreign grants and loans was Tk 9,042 crore or 60 per cent.
The share in expenditure from the government fund and the foreign assistance was also higher in the corresponding period of the previous financial year — 77 per cent and 61 per cent respectively.
The government allocated Tk 46,000 crore for ADP for this financial year which has been downsized to Tk 41,000 crore in the revised ADP.
According to IMED data, in July–May, the power division achieved the highest implementation rate of 87 per cent followed by the science and technology ministry 85 per cent.
Some other eight ministries and division achieved more than 80 per cent of revised ADP implementation rate including primary and mass education ministry, disaster management and relief division, women and children affairs ministry, land ministry, defence ministry, energy and mineral resource, food and statistics division.
On the other hand, civil aviation and tourism ministry achieved the lowest implementation rate of 11 per cent in the 11 months of the financial year.
Planning ministry officials said that the main reasons for slow progress of revised ADP implementation were inefficiency and administrative failure of the implementing agencies and slower disbursement of foreign loans and grants.