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The government’s development expenditure saw a modest rise by 0.17 percentage points to 24.06 percent in the first half of FY22 mainly thanks to improved local resources utilisation.
Implementing agencies managed to accomplish 23.89 percent progress in Annual Development Programme (ADP) during the same period of FY21.
The volume of expenditure grew by 11.11 percent year-on-year to Tk 569.62 billion during the July-December period of FY 22 from Tk 512.66 billion during the same period of FY 21, planning ministry data show.
“ADP spending was slightly better in the first six months despite the Covid situation. I am happy with this performance,” Planning Minister MA Mannan told the Daily Sun on Tuesday.
“Bangladesh has been maintaining a stable economic performance despite the corona pandemic. Many global agencies are now appreciating Bangladesh’s economic performance amid the pandemic,” he added.
The highest July-December ADP performance was recorded at 27.45 percent in the 2018-19 fiscal year but in terms of volume of expenditure, the highest Tk 571.96 billion ADP money was spent in 2019-20 fiscal year, when the country first witnessed the Covid-19 impacts from early March.
Bangladesh had to first embrace a two-month lockdown mainly in the last quarter of FY20 for the corona crisis, shrinking economic activities.
In the year, ADP performance was steady in the first three quarters, Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) data suggest.
Since then, the large foreign-funded schemes had to face a severe setback from the global health and economic crisis as foreign project consultants, engineers and workers left the country.
But the situation is improving now as all the major projects alongside the medium and smaller ones have nearly returned to normalcy.
In the first six months of the current fiscal, local resource utilisation rate improved to 25.26 percent from last fiscal’s 24.02 percent while the money expenditure rose from Tk 323.45 billion to Tk 346.79 billion.
Overseas project assistance (PA) utilization, on the other hand, slipped year-on-year to 22.21 percent from 24.91 percent even though total expenditure was higher at Tk 195.53 billion compared to Tk 175.63 billion a year earlier.
Against this backdrop, Economic Relations Division (ERD) has proposed 20 percent cut in Tk 880.24 billion original PA allocation to Tk 702.50 billion in revised ADP for the ongoing FY22, Planning Commission sources said.
However, foreign fund release broke all the previous half-yearly record, reaching $4.18 billion as development partners released their committed budget support to help Bangladesh meet Covid emergencies alongside funds for large schemes.
Some 15 highest fund recipient ministries or divisions as a whole managed to post higher than the national average performance of 24.41 percent with industries ministry at the top position with 52.84 percent performance, followed by housing and public works ministry’s 36.17 percent and water resource ministry’s 28.54 percent.
Road transport and highways division could achieve 28.36 percent ADP performance while the local government division posted 26.82 percent, railways ministry 26.57 percent. But important health services division managed only 9.84 percent.
But the first six months’ performance was not enough to break the shackle of the traditional practice of public agencies to spend less in the first half and go for a spending spree in the last six months.
From his long experience as a bureaucrat, the planning minister said he has found that development budget execution moves in a slow lane in the first half as project preparation takes some time and the ADP gathers pace later in the year.
“The ADP advanced through a bureaucratic system and projects pass many tables. So, I’m not the man who alone can bring about revolutionary changes to the system. But we are trying to address the issues,” MA Mannan commented.
Unlike obsolete practice, now even the head of the government look after the ADP progress and raise questions about different issues, he added.
He also acknowledged that there might have been some illogical reasons behind delaying project work apart from the logical reasons to spend more money in the later part of a year.
(DS)
