NEWSPAPERS have observed that the government’s budgetary pledges for the outgoing (2013-14) financial year are in default as the implementation lags far behind, chiefly because of management failures. Economists believe that targets in economic growth, inflation, infrastructure, revenue and industrial expansion could have been achieved if fundamental problems in the economy had been solved, infrastructure was developed and political uncertainties were settled. The budget for the 2014 financial year promised a Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway project, rapid bus transit, Dhaka-Chittagong railway upgradation, satellite towns at Dhamrai and Kamrangirchar, three four-lane bridges along the existing bridges at Kachpur, the Meghna and the Gumti starting of a deep sea port at Sonadia. However, not a single of the infrastructure projects has made any progress at all.Considering its own mismanagement, the government scaled down tax collection target to Tk 1,25,000 crore from the target of Tk 1,36,000 crore. Although the current budget aimed at netting a huge amount of untaxed money, better known as black money; in the housing sector, the revenue from the sector till April was only Tk 26 crore. As people having untaxed money thought that they would face no regulatory hassles for owning such money, they felt no urgency for any such disclosure. The government should either to go tough on or be friendly to untaxed money to make it flow into the formal economy. The gross domestic product which was estimated to have a 7.2 per cent growth lags far behind as the planning ministry believes the growth could be closer to 6.2 per cent. The World Bank, estimates the growth at 5.4 per cent and the Bangladesh Bank in the range of 5.7-6.1 per cent. These all are few examples of the mismanagement and anarchy that prevails in the economy now. This anarchic situation must not continue. Government policymakers need to set forth mechanisms to repair economic governance. Experts think lack of implementation capacity among ministries and agencies, flaws in conceptualization among development bureaucrats about large infrastructure projects, corruption and inefficiency to use the funds of multilateral lenders all resulted in this poor implementation performance. It is a governance problem where the corrupt are not worried about their ill-gotten money. We, echoing the economists’ voice, advise the government to concentrate more on implementation rather than making mere loud commitments. The ambitious budgetary estimates, which are more populist than realistic, should be avoided to bring order to the country’s financial management. This type of pompous promises not only harms the government’s political credentials but also severely affects economic certainty.
