Anisul Islam Noor :
The authorities of Power Division have achieved an average 10 per cent progress in project implementation in last five months of the current fiscal year (2016-17) against its target of 36.13 percent.
During the corresponding period of the last fiscal, the Power Division had made an overall physical progress of 33.80 per cent.
According to Power Division internet report, implementation of 37 projects out of 84 has made no progress during the last first five months till November. Another 24 projects made up to 30.21 per cent overall progress during the period in terms of budget disbursement.
The project implementation authorities believed to spend Tk 15,932 crore, 46.80 per cent of the budget allocation, under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) in the five months for implementing the 84 projects, sources said.
Power Division Secretary Ahmad Kaikaus has recently told journalists that most of the projects having poor or no progress either at initial stage or stuck in tendering process.
“Once the tendering process and other initial tasks are done, significant progress in the project implementation will be visible,” he said.
He, however, said that those projects were at initial stage as they got small amount of the budgetary allocation for the initial tasks only.
There are projects like installation of pre-paid electric meters which have been stuck at bidding stage for the past three financial years hindering overall progress in the implementation of the Power Sector projects, officials said.
It is to be noted that the Power Sector received the government’s priority for the past few years in terms of budget allocation under the ADP.
In June 2015, the government doubled the ADP allocation for the implementation of the Power Sector projects in FS 2015-16 to Tk 16,485 crore, they said.
The projects having no progress in implementation include 13 generation, seven transmission and 15 power distribution projects. The rest two projects are to facilitate renewable and sustainable energy.
The 37 projects got allocation of Tk 1,723.65 crore under the current Annual Development Programme, according to the Power Division report.
The projects include re-powering three old gas-fired power plants to increase their efficiencies, installing prepaid electric meters across the country under four projects and enhancing power transmission and distribution capacities.
