THE budgetary spending on Annual Development Programme (ADP) during the last 10 months stood at only 50 percent of the revised allocation of Tk 91,000 crore. It means that the government’s development Ministries have miserably failed to execute the projects during the July-April period. They spent only Tk 45,108 crore during this period while it aims at spending the remaining half in next two months in May-June period. It appears quite impractical how the government would be able to spend half of the ADP expenditure in two months while it blamed poor capacity of the implementation agencies and resource mismatch for the big setback in the first 10 months. Many wonder whether budgetary spending alone shows the rate of implementation of the development projects or the real development must be visible in the ground, which seems to be impossible other than just showing it on papers. It appears that the original ADP allocation in the current fiscal 2015-16 was Tk 97,000 crore which was later revised downward to Tk 91,000 crore last month. Had the original allocations remained intact; the real ADP performance would have been even lower than 50 percent over the last 10 months. The mismatch in ADP implementation is not something new, such setback is almost routinely reported every year raising questions how the government is ensuring the quality of public expenditure to suggest that every taka is accounted for against development work in the ground. Unfortunately the same setback like shortage of capacity and inefficiency is being blamed this year too to justify failure in ADP implementation just two to these months ahead of the close of the fiscal year. Many wonder then how the government may claim 90 to 95 percent ADP implementation at the year end. This is the big question. It is true that the implementation of the ADP starts slow at the beginning of fiscal year with slow mobilization of work and resources. But it is also unbelievable that the last two to three months achieve such phenomenal progress; which many believe may not be practically possible without manipulation of facts and figures. There is no denying of the fact that budgetary expenditures are open to misuse and misappropriation by corruption by political leaders and project officials with the help of contractors. But we can’t leave the tax-payers’ money and development assistance by donors to be so misused. There must be visible administrative measures to enhance project implementation capacity and also accounting measures to bring discipline to ADP expenditure.Reports said the Bridges Division has spent only 41 and Padma Bridge has received the largest allocation. The remaining nine development Ministries achieved more or less similar performance that needs further boost to achieve the targeted growth.
