Many such infrastructure projects are struggling to make their completion quick as time and cost over-run are making such projects big burden on budgetary resources. An English Daily in a report said most of the government’s show-piece projects are combating to end but lack of competent political leadership, inefficiency of implementing agencies and bureaucratic tangle are trailing them far behind the time schedule.
The projects, including Metro Rail, Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, Rampal Power Plant, Payra Sea Port, Matarbari Power Plant, Padma Bridge rail link, Dohazari-Cox’s Bazar – Gundum rail line, Khulna-Mongla rail line, a new dual gauge Dhaka-Narayanganj rail line, Sonadia Deep Sea Port, LNG terminal, expansion of some highways, Dhaka-Elevated Expressway and Karnaphuli Tunnel Project and many others. They are taking the biggest part of the development budget leaving only a small part for other development projects. It is a very critical situation while their implementation is facing setback.
It appears that the government is in a rush for completing those projects as politically prioritized projects to demonstrate to the people that it is working on big projects to achieve higher growth. But in doing so it has accepted a number of projects without proper financial planning, structural designing, and also ensuring source of fund and coordination among various government bodies. The persons in charge of projects seem to have compromised all these basic requirements, which are now causing delay in projects implementation and subsequently cost overruns. In our view with this attitude it is not possible to achieve sustainable growth.
The country needs job creating projects and not show-piece projects for the misconceived ideas about development. Our fear is these mega projects will provide opportunities for mega corruption. No pro-people government would do it.
