THE New Nation on Saturday reported that the mega projects taken by the government have been running into repeated cost overrun leading to unforeseen drainage of public money to the benefit of a selected few. Faulty estimate of projects’ costs and delays in their implementation are mainly responsible for the massive rise in the cost overrun. Besides, bloated bureaucracy, inefficiency of the Project Directors and inexperienced contractors are also blamed for the spiralling of costs. The extravagant cost due to delays and cost explosion have huge economic implications as the increased high costs will be burden on the next generations by increasing their loan burdens. The mega projects — The Padma Multipurpose Bridge, the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway and the Moghbazar-Mouchak flyover — are incurring cost overruns. The government should be accountable before citizens for entangling them in the massive cost increases.
Despite receiving added funds and time extensions several times, the failure of completion within the last extended budget and time have disabled the economic efficiency and competence. To stop money laundering and maximizing economic benefits, the works need to be executed soon, where the government is seen reluctant. Prone to massive cost overruns, the projects pose a threat to the economy instead of encouraging it as delay of projects increases cost which widens the option of corruption. The current trend of projects’ executions has hinted that it may be delayed further that will increase more wasteful expenditures and squeeze the government’s ability to provide funds to other projects.
As per the news reports, the total cost of the much-hyped Padma Bridge Project will finally come to Tk 28,793.38 crore, which is almost three times the original estimate. The deadline for the completion of the Moghbazar-Mouchak flyover has been extended again and again, with its cost going up by 58 percent. Construction was scheduled to finish by December 2015, but until that time only 60 percent of work had been completed with cost to going up from Tk 772 crore to Tk 1218 crore. And the deadline of the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway has been extended four times which was supposed be finished by 2012. Other mega projects, include: the deep sea port, the metro rail, nuclear power, Dhaka Elevated Expressway, dredging of 53 river routes, coal-fired power plants, building of a LPG terminal, digitising land management, building new rail lines, equipping the rail sector, and several dual-carriage highways are still at the planning stage.
The mega projects may be prone to mega corruption and delay in completion is only enriching the accounts of some quarters and exhausting the government’s ability to invest in other development projects. We don’t want to see the mega projects to appear as mega failures.
