THE volume of undisbursed project aid (PA) ballooned to more than US$48 billion until December last, as many public agencies failed to utilise the same, officials said, a national daily reported on Tuesday. It is more than enough to bankroll the annual development programme of the country for two years taking the revised ADP for the year 2019-20 to US$23 billion. Moreover the volume of aid in the pipeline has been rising for the past decades and the report has unmistakably blamed weaknesses of the government agencies in preparing and implementing projects within the stipulated time for leaving much of the funds unutilized and development potentials underexploited.
As we know foreign aid is usually provided as medium and long-term (MLT) loans and grants by development partners, notably by the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, Japan and China. At the end of the last FY-20, fresh commitments amounted to $9.8 billion and $6.2 billion of assistance, the highest ever, was utilised. Yet the amount fell short of the spending target of $7.5 billion, as per ERD statistics.
This year some progress is noticeable since aid disbursement during July-December period is slightly higher than the commitment. But the huge volume of aid in the pipeline only reflects the government’s growing inability to make sure maximum use of the external resources for attaining higher growth. Our government talks much about impressive growth but the volume of underutilized aid money shows it is just fooling the nation.
As we see we have a government totally corrupt and inept. The fact is that our government is not accountable at any level to take responsibility for failure. Everybody knows our leadership is akin to big spending projects and politically motivated projects. Conflicts of interest in procurement contracts often delay fund approval by donors. Moreover, inefficiency, faulty project design, complex land acquisition, frequent transfer of project officials on political motive delay timely start and quick implementation of project.
We would say our efforts to improve aid utilization will not pay much despite holding regular review meetings at various levels. It would pay only little unless there is a change in our system of governance which is focussed on getting rich overnight. Capacity of implementation agencies similarly must improve.
