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The rate of the implementation of the annual development programme in the eight months (July-February) of the current fiscal year 2019-2020 stood at a three-year low as the government agencies could execute only 37.09 per cent or Tk 79,786 crore of the ADP in the period.
The previous lowest implementation rate of the government’s development budget in the July-February period was 36.91 per cent in FY 2016-2017.
The agencies, including ministries and divisions, implemented 39.13 per cent of the ADP in the period in FY 2018-2019 and 38.01 per cent in FY 2017-2018, according to the data of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the planning ministry.
The government will have to spend Tk 1,35,328 crore or 63 per cent of the total outlay worth Tk 2,15,114 crore adopted for the entire fiscal year in the remaining months, the IMED data showed.
Officials and economists said that the government would have to cut the size of the ADP significantly to achieve the target of a full implementation as the execution of some mega projects, including Padma Bridge, might become slow down due to the impact of coronavirus outbreak in China.
They said that the implementation rate of Padma Bridge would become slower as some Chinese nationals could not come back while the supply of equipment and goods from the country was also disrupted due to the epidemic.
The progress in implementation of some other projects may also slow down if the coronavirus spread further in Bangladesh as the virus has already been detected in the country, they added.
Policy Research Institute executive director Ahsan H Mansur told New Age that the implementation rate should have been at least near 50 per cent in the eight months whatever the situation was.
Expenditure spree in the closing three to four months to achieve the target causes wastage of public money and deterioration in the quality of development works, he said.
He said that the government usually cut down the size of the ADP by on average 10 per cent in the revised ADP.
This year it may require to downsize the revised ADP at a higher rate as the impact of coronavirus may disrupt the implementation of some mega projects, Ahsan said.
He said that the government should address the problems behind the slow progress in the first half of the fiscal year to improve the project implementation management.
According to the IMED data, the implementation of donor-funded portion of the ADP dropped to 35.09 per cent in July-February of FY20 from that of 40.37 per cent in the same period of FY19.
On the other hand, the progress rate of government-funded ADP rose to 40.08 per cent in the period of FY20 from that of 38.03 per cent in the same period of the last fiscal year.
Planning minister MA Mannan, however, claimed that the progress in terms of amount of money spent under the APD was the actual progress, not the rate of implementation.
The government agencies spent Tk 9,014 crore higher in July-February of FY20 compared with that in the same period of FY19 when the agencies had spent Tk 70,772 crore, he said at a press briefing after the ECNEC meeting held at the NEC auditorium in the capital on Tuesday.
He also admitted that the coronavirus outbreak would also affect the ADP implementation as there were projections by international agencies about possible slowdown in the global economy.
It is not clear to what extent the virus would affect the ADP and the country’s economy, he said.
(NA)
