REPORTS in a national daily on Tuesday said the development spending in the first quarter of the current fiscal 2015-16 is the lowest in four years. The annual development budget this year is over Tk 97,000 crore with the heaviest tax load on the common people. But in matters of implementing development, the inept government machinery and their inefficient handling of projects at field level are causing inordinate delays in accelerating the implementation of the nation’s development programmes.
The blame equally goes to the government at the first place for lacking the leadership to achieve higher development. The government often boost its politics saying ‘development first, democracy next’ but as things suggest neither development nor respect to democracy as the system of governance is bothering the government. Moving on an increasingly authoritarian system it is busy charting out politics to stay longer in power where addressing sensitivities related to development and project implementation have little place for greater attention.
Meanwhile, the bureaucracy which is handling development projects is busy how to realize best pays and service conditions using pressure on the government and all that partly explains the snail’s pace of ADP implementation over the past three months.
Reports said between July and September, Tk 6,502 crore has been spent from the budget, down 7.43 percent year-on-year basis from last year. Many explain the lowest expenditure in the first quarter saying 73 percent of the development budget has been earmarked to 10 Ministries and their failure to mobilize work mainly related to big infrastructure projects in power, road, railways and highways has basically caused the big drop in overall ADP implementation.
Meanwhile, foreign aid disbursement fell by 20 percent in the first two months from July to August due to low development spending. Disbursement stood at US$ 292.71 million; which is only 3 percent of the annual aid disbursement targets. The government has set the high aid disbursement target for the fiscal year at $4.36 billion up from $ 3.35 billion, but the very poor start off in aid utilization or achieving physical progress at field level left the fulfillment of the annual development targets or aid utilization targets in doubt.
JICA has recalled some of its aid while ADB is about to reduce disbursement based on slow pace of progress. World Bank’s individual disbursement is scheduled to be higher this year but the issue is the bottleneck at physical implementation of the projects. It needs greater government capacity and efficiency where the government is utterly failing. The country is now having over $ 21 billion in the pipeline but they remain largely idle in absence of effective plans and charting out their utilization targets.
So there is nothing unexpected at poor ADP implementation over the past three months. The government lacks efficiency and leadership all around. But the government will not accept change.
