Published in New Age on Thursday, 29 May 2014.
ADP spending sluggish
Ahmed Shawki
The implementation of annual development programme was very slow in the current 2013–2014 financial year as 45 per cent of the development fund has remained unused with two months remaining.
Experts and planning ministry officials, however, said that as it happened in the past, the government might go on a spending spree in last two months of the financial year compromising on the quality of work.
The latest Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division data show that the government could spend only 55 per cent of the revised ADP of Tk 60,000 crore in July–April.
The government in April downscaled the ADP size to Tk 60,000 crore from Tk 65,870 crore considering the poor implementation rate and revenue collection shortage.
Planning officials said that political unrest centring on the national elections of January 5 and a government focus on tackling post-elections situation had affected ADP spending in the financial year. The inefficiency of ADP implantation agencies also hampered the spending.
‘This has been a general trend for the past few years that all agencies go for hurried spending in the last two months. Apart from the usual delay, political unrest in the first half of the financial year also hampered development work,’ a planning ministry official said.
He said that on the final count, the total ADP implementation of the year could cross 90 per cent but the question would remain about the quality of the hurried work.
In the past 2012–2013 fiscal year, the government could spend 96 per cent of the revised ADP of Tk 52,366 crore although in July-April of the year, the spending was only 54 per cent.
In last month of previous financial year, government agencies and departments spent Tk 13,768 crore, almost a fourth of the revised ADP, in a hurried
implementation with the general elections being in focus.
The ADP implementation rate was 93 per cent in the 2011–2012 financial year and it ranged between 83 and 92 per cent in the past eight financial years.
Asked about the slow ADP implementation, former caretaker government finance adviser Mirza Azizul Islam told New Age that there was hardly any chance that the government could fully implement the ADP in the last two months.
He said that the government was not clear about where the money would come from and even if it could arrange the fund, the lack of capacity and inefficiency would continue to be an issue.
‘If we consider the trend, about Tk 45,000 crore of the ADP fund could be spent in the current financial year,’ he said.
He, however, said that there would be a spending spree towards the end of the financial year.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue executive director, Mustafizur Rahman, said that a last-minute spending spree was common in Bangladesh.
‘They also consider the final figure based on the revised ADP, which also ranks up the implantation status,’ he said.
He said that there had been higher implementation figures in the past few years but the quality of work came to be questioned.
‘We should not only focus on spending figures but also concentrate on the quality of the work,’ he said.
The IMED data showed that among the major ministries, the bridges division could spent only 25 per cent of its allocation in the first 10 months because of a delay in the Padma Birdge project implementation.
The water resources ministry could spent 44 per cent, the roads division 45 per cent and the power division 51 per cent.