A new spending spree of public money is under way this time under the guise of a bigger revised annual development programme (RADP) ignoring experts opinion to restrain its size as the government seriously lacks the capacity to implement development projects. The money for a bigger RADP may rather open up more avenues for corruption and misuse of funds fear the experts while opposing a bigger RADP and the inclusion of more projects which are mainly of a political nature in it. But the National Economic Council (NEC) on Thursday approved it at a cost of Tk 60,000 crore while Finance Minister AMA Muhith wanted to keep its size down at Tk 55,000 crore. News report said Muhith’s plea for a smaller RADP came under sharp attack from Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal while placing an additional demand of Tk 8,777 crore from different ministries. Consequently, Muhith had to bow to the pressure to arrange more funds for the ministers in our system which now lacks both transparency and accountability of public funds in most cases. Reports said the NEC approved the RADP ignoring the Finance Minister’s warning that the revenue shortfall this year would be over Tk 11,000 crore and to provide the additional fund to ministers he would have to borrow an additional amount of Tk 5,000 crore from banks. It will increase the overall borrowing of the government from banks to Tk 31,000 crore. But his warning did not work while the Prime Minister remained supportive of a big RADP to funnel more public funds to development activities although critics fear much of it may be misused for funding political activities at the end. Fiscal experts watching the development remained similarly skeptical questioning the justification of the bigger RADP even with additional borrowing from banks. Reports said ministers are not interested in seeking foreign funds for development projects because of the accountability factors associated with them. Instead they are asking the Finance Minister to arrange money from domestic sources which left local banks as the only viable source. However, they are least worried about the repayment liabilities incurred by borrowing the money in one hand and the quality of the expenditure on the other. Media reports meanwhile showed that progress in implementing the present ADP projects was poor-currently at 38 percent in February over the 8 months of the current fiscal. In real terms, the government had spent Tk 25,218 crore by that time suggesting that any meaningful spending of the remaining Tk 34,000 crore over the next four months will be either impossible or spent just for the sake of it. But notwithstanding the capacity or the quality of the spending, ministers, most of whom are businessmen and retired bureaucrats, including the Planning Minister are hungry for more money raising questions about whether or not this money will be properly utilized. The World Bank’s lead economist at its Dhaka office has raised the same question on the government’s ability to spend such a huge amount of money within this time. He also fears wasteful expenditure echoing similar fears from other quarters. In fact there was hardly any time when a Finance Minister’s budget estimates were turned down by other cabinet ministers in so far as securing unjustified allocations. It happened this time when the government is sitting on a fractured election victory with the legitimacy question chasing it from home and abroad.Fiscal experts meanwhile questioned the number of projects in the RADP—currently at 1254, up this time from 1046 in the original ADP. There will be another 557 new projects to be listed in the plan without any allocations. Experts fear that the government may be going in all intents to use the ADP as a means to achieve political ends; but in doing so it may be destroying the nation’s fiscal discipline at a greater cost.
