Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
Experts on Saturday expressed doubt over the implementation of next fiscal’s development budget due to poor capacity of the government’s concerned agencies and lack of economic and administrative reforms and enabling political environment.
Terming the proposed development expenditure is ‘high-flying’, they said, it is likely to be reduced later by a greater margin in absence of smooth implementation mechanism, entrenched bureaucracy and probable shortage of fund.
The government on Thursday approved a development spending of Tk 97,000 crore for the next fiscal year (2015-16), giving highest priority to the transport and power sector.
The allocation of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) is 16.7 percent higher than Tk 80,315 crore original outlay and 30 percent more than the Tk 75,000 crore revised allocation of the outgoing fiscal year (2014-15).
“It will be very difficult to implement such a large development budget as we have seen before,” former finance adviser to the caretaker government Dr AB Mirza Azizul Islam told The New Nation yesterday.
He added: I have lots of doubt about the financing of such a big ADP, if the resource mobilization trend and possible foreign aid disbursement are taken into consideration.”
He also said that there are big allocations in the proposed ADP for building major infrastructures. The challenge will be spending these allocations efficiently and in time avoiding costs overruns to deliver optimum results within targeted timeframes.
Mirza Aziz mentioned that it has become a tradition to propose a big size ADP, with many projects are taken every year for boosting public expenditure.
“But the both ADP implementation and expenditure scenario are not reaching optimum level at the end of the fiscal year due to poor capacity of the implementing agencies and financial constrain,” he noted. Considering the fact, he said, the government should put a realistic approach in taking development projects so that they can be implemented in time. “The proposed ADP is ‘unrealistic’ if we consider the capacity of the government and its agencies,” said former Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Salehuddin Ahmed.
He said that the government proposed a ‘gigantic’ development expenditure from a ‘fantasy’ as did the past. But such expenditure targets have never been achieved due to lack of necessary administrative reforms and enabling political environment.
So, in my mind, he said, the government’s lofty expenditure goal set for the next fiscal would face similar fate.
