The interim government has taken a move to expedite the implementation of the annual development programme (ADP) aiming to induce money flow in the economy.
To expedite the implementation, the interim government has decided to put emphasis on the projects which have been cleared by them since coming to office on August 8.
The government in principle took the decision at a recently held ECNEC meeting chaired by the Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus.
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The decision came following the record lowest ADP implementation rate of just 8 percent in the first four months of the running 2024-25 fiscal.
According to the Planning Commission sources, directives have been given to accelerate implementation of the projects from now on.
Planning Adviser Dr Wahiduddin Mahmud while briefing reporters about the recently held ECNEC meeting had said that the approved ADP projects by this government would be implemented quickly aiming to accelerate the implementation rate.
“By this way, hopefully we will be able to increase the implementation rate by the end of the running fiscal,” he said.
But he said that the implementation would be done in a proper way.
Planning Commission sources said that the government put special emphasis on the good and innovative projects which are corruption free initially, while implementation of the projects have to be corruption free from any aspect.
The interim government thinks that the previous Awami League government took a number of projects at inflated value that resulted in irregularities during its implementation level, including during the appointment of the contractor.
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To prevent corruption and irregularities in the development projects, from the very beginning the interim government tried to stop wastage of public money, and corruption and cut short the number of projects numbers for which the implementation rate suffered a lot, causing a heavy toll on the money circulation in the economy.
“We will definitely scrutinise the projects, we have taken the decision in principle that the good projects that we are thinking about and which got new project directors will be advanced in a speedy manner,” the Planning Adviser said.
The interim government that came into office on August 8 following the student-people uprising has decided to cut short many development projects terming those as the politically motivated ones.
The four months of the running fiscal saw a record low of 8 percent implementation of the development budget, according to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Planning Ministry. The same period last year saw an execution rate of 11.54%.
As per the information from the Planning Commission the rate is 12-13 percent for those government entities which implement projects from their own funding.
Specifically, for the period from July to October of the current fiscal year, the government managed to implement development projects worth Tk 21,978 crore, according to the IMED.
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The Professor Muhammad Yunus led interim government in its first Ecnec meeting had decided to reduce the development budget.
The National Economic Council (NEC) of the Awami League government approved the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the fiscal year of 2024-2025 with an outlay of Tk 265,000 crores.
The transport and communication sector got the highest allocation of Tk 70, 687.75 crore (26. 67pc of budget allocation) in the ADP.
With 13,288.91 crore ADP for autonomous bodies or corporations, the total size of ADP for 2024-2025 stood at Tk 278,288.91 crore.