Muhid Hasan :
Spending under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) has been going slowly with implementing agencies using just 42.30 percent of the total allocation in the first nine months of the current fiscal.
According to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) data published on Tuesday, public agencies had spent Tk 1 lakh 16 thousand crore in the first three-quarters of the Tk 2, 54,391 crore outlay for the current fiscal year.
However, the current ADP implementation rate is up by a slight margin compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
The first nine months of the previous fiscal year of 2022-23 saw the record lowest implementation rate of ADP in at least the last 10 years, with only 41.65 per cent of the total outlay being spent till March.
According to IMED data, ADP implementation rates during the July-March period in previous fiscal years were 45.05 per cent in FY2022, 41.92 per cent in FY2021, 45.08 per cent in FY2020 and 47.22 per cent in FY2019.
Earlier till February this fiscal, ADP implementation percentage was 31.17 the lowest rate in more than a decade. Even during the government’s austerity drive in the last fiscal year, the implementation rate stood at 32.10 percent.
Alone in March, development programme execution rate increased by 8.65 per cent.
IMED officials said some large ministries and budget holders, such as the health ministry, shipping ministry and Secondary and Higher Education Division, have not improved their ADP implementation rates, affecting the overall execution.
According to IMED data, of 58 ministries and departments, 14 have spent less than 30 percent of their allocations.
Fifteen ministries and departments have been allocated 77.19 percent of the total ADP.
Among the 15 highest ADP allocation recipients, the shipping ministry was the worst-performing division in the July-March period. The Health Services Division was able to spend 31.67 per cent of the total allocation during this period.
The power division was the top performer during this period, spending 63.87 percent of its budget.
Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, an independent think-tank, said, “The slow implementation was related to the government’s financial issues.”
The government usually spends around 80 per cent of the total ADP budget and more than 90 per cent of the revised budget every year.
Meanwhile, in last fiscal only 84.16 percent of the revised ADP allocation was spent. Even Ministries and divisions also fell short of utilising 100 percent of foreign loans, even after the foreign aid utilisation target was reduced in the revised ADP.