Dhaka – The National Economic Council (NEC) on Tuesday approved an overall Revised Annual Development Programme (RADP) outlay of Tk 1,19,296 crore for the current fiscal year (FY17), down from the original overall ADP size of Tk 1,23,345 crore.
The approval came from the NEC meeting held at the NEC conference room in the city with its Chairperson and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.
The original revised ADP allocation, excluding the organisation’s own funding in the current fiscal year, stood at Tk 1,10,700 crore.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said the original overall ADP size in the current fiscal year was estimated at Tk 1,23,345 crore, including Tk 70,700 crore from the GoB fund, Tk 40,000 crore from the Project Assistance while Tk 12,645 crore from the organisation’s own fund.
But, today’s NEC meeting decided to downsise the revised ADP to Tk 1,19,296 crore, including Tk 77,700 crore from the GoB fund, Tk 33,000 crore from Project Assistance Portion while the rest of Tk 8,596 crore from the organisation’s own fund.
Mustafa Kamal said it was unusual this year that the GoB funding has been increased by around Tk 7,000 crore in the revised ADP while the Project Assistance portion has been curtailed by around Tk 7,000 crore from the original allocation due to non-utilisation of project assistance portion for various reasons.
The Planning Minister said although an amount of Tk 40,000 crore was earmarked in the ADP from the project assistance portion, this time government implementing agencies failed to spend Tk 7,000 crore from the project assistance for various reasons, including the impact of Holey Artisan Bakery terrorist attack in the city last year.
“If such a big fund from foreign sources remained unused, then we might face difficulties in achieving the targeted 7.2 percent GDP growth rate in the current fiscal year…so, the government has raised its GoB allocation in the RADP to compensate that,” he added.
Noting that raising the investment-GDP ratio is an important matter, Kamal said the investment-GDP ratio is now hovering at 29.65 percent and the government needs to raise it further to 30.15 percent to achieve the targeted GDP growth.
“For this, the government will have to raise the public investment to 7 percent of GDP,” he added.
Answering to a question, Mustafa Kamal said the demand for additional allocation in the RADP from the various Ministries and Divisions were Tk 11,876 crore while Tk 7,700 crore were allocated against these additional demand.
He said this additional allocation would be later distributed among Ministries and Divisions based on their demand and implementation capacity.
Replying to another question, the Planning Minister said although the utilisation rate of ADP in the mega projects is a bit slow, the overall ADP size and implementation has been doubled over the last five years.
He said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the meeting asked the Ministries and Divisions concerned to be more cautious and strengthen their implementation capacity in the RADP.
The minister also said the RADP allocation against the Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project will remain the same and there would be no cut.
According to the data provided by the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the Planning Ministry, the pace of implementation of the annual development programme remained sluggish with the ministries and divisions managing to spend only 32.41 percent of the total allocation for the entire fiscal year during the first seven months.
The IMED data revealed that the implementation rates during the July-January were 28 percent, 32 percent, 33 percent, and 38 percent in FY2015-16, FY 2014-15, FY 2013-14 and FY 2012-13 respectively.
Ministers, state ministers, Planning Commission members and secretaries concerned were present.
source:UNB
