Matiur RahmanThe incumbent Awami League government went into spending spree keeping apparently an eye on the next general election as the implementation rate of the revised ADP in June of 2012-2013 financial year was 96 per cent, highest in last 10 years. The government agencies and departments spent Tk 13,768 crore, or almost one fourth of the revised annual development progtamme of Tk 52,366 crore rather in a hurried implementation drive of different projects in June, the last month of the fiscal year though the implementation rate of the revised ADP till May was only 69 per cent. Caring little about the quality of work, it seems, the political leaders sitting at the top of the government kept hardly paid attention as people linked to the ruling party were engaged in implementing most of the development activities across the country for making quick money ahead of the election. A hurried implementation of different projects means ‘no quality’ work and the ruling party-affiliated people who got the project work care little about monitoring and payments were also made rather in a hurry following instructions over phone from authorities concerned as alleged by officials of the government’s IMED – Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division.
Economists and experts are of the view that that there was nothing to be complacent about the record rate of ADP implementation in a single month in a hurried manner as has been done in the fiscal year’s concluding month, particularly ahead of an election. When a government goes for hurried spending, there is scope for misuse of public money as Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies’ research director remarked. In this regard he mentioned that the government decided to go for spending spree to give an impression that it is for all out development of the country.
The IMED data says that the total expenditure in the last fiscal year was Tk 50,026 crore including Tk 16,809 crore as project assistance from development partners out of total revised ADP of Tk52,366 crore.
IMED also took into consideration autonomous bodies’ allocation of Tk 5,022 crore in the revised ADP but it calculated the implementation of their projects separately. The autonomous bodies
spent Tk 2,258 crore or 45 per cent of the total allocation. The rate of implementation was 93 per cent in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, it hovered between 83 and 92 per cent in the previous eight fiscal years.
Many of the ministries, according to IMED data released recently, spent strangely more than their allocations as the parliamentary affairs division showed 304 per cent more expenditure of the allocation in the revised ADP.
