Govt suspends land acquisition, machineries purchase

Staff Reporter :
The government found way to reduce operating expenditure following austerity measures taken to fight ongoing pressure on the economy caused by the war between Ukraine and Russia prior to recover from the adverse impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
The Finance Ministry imposed several restrictions on acquisition of land, issuing notification of award (NoA) for building and disbursing any amount for machinery purchase.
The notification issued by the finance ministry on Tuesday would help save a significant portion from total allocation TK 21882.20 crore for these three sectors.
The notification signed by Mohammad Anisuzzaman, Deputy Secretary of the Finance Ministry imposed restriction to acquire any kind of land from the allocation of the operating expenditure.
The budget for the current fiscal year has an allocation of Tk 1072.43 crore to acquire land under the operating expenditure.

The notification restricted issuing notification of award (NoA) for “Buildings and structures” under operating expenses. The concerned ministries and division would be allowed to spending maximum half of the total allocation in the cases of NoA issued earlier. The sector has an allocation worth Tk 7660.75 crore.

The Ministry also imposed restriction on disbursement of any amount for “Machinery and equipment” under the operating expenditure. The sector has an allocation of 13149.02 crore under the budget.
The Finance Ministry ordered to implement the notification at once and issued another notification regarding formulating revised budget for the current fiscal year.

The Ministry ordered to follow restrictions disbursing money for several components of development budget been imposed earlier.

The Ministry had forbidden allocation proposal with higher amount than the original budget, but allowed higher allocation for any priority sector reducing allocation for another sector of the same ministry.

Unspent amount of development budget of any ministry would not be allowed for operating expenditure, according to the notification.

Restriction on procuring vehicle would be maintained further. Sealing of the disbursement for entertainment, travel, stationery would remain 50pc for development projects. The austerity measures regarding expenses for using fuel, energy, electricity and other utility would remain same.