Planning Minister M A Mannan will sit with different ministries today (Tuesday) to evaluate the government's development projects due to non-satisfactory progress in their implementation and a tendency of the agencies concerned to seek repeated revision of projects.
"Since the ministries and agencies seek revision of their projects frequently, the minister will try to find out their shortcomings in this regard," said a senior official of the Planning Commission (PC) on Monday.
The projects under the Revised Annual Development Programme (RADP) of the last fiscal year (FY), 2018-19, and the ADP of the current FY, 2019-20, will be reviewed at the meeting.
Secretaries, project directors and high officials concerned of different ministries will be present at the meeting, to be held at the PC in the capital.
A chief of the PC said: "In most of the cases, the ministries and agencies seek revision or re-appropriation of allocated funds for their projects. It affects the government's fiscal management as well as timely implementation of development work."
So, the planning minister is likely to ask the implementing agencies to avoid the tendency of seeking fund re-appropriation for their projects, he told the FE.
Re-appropriation of funds means transferring funds from one to another component of any particular project, or reallocating earmarked money from one project to another project within the same ministry or division.
According to the official, the PC has been forced to re-appropriate funds for more than 600 projects of different agencies even after revision of the ADP in the third quarter of last FY.
"Firstly, the public agencies seek necessary funds for expenditure against their projects during preparation of the ADP for a particular year. Secondly, we revise their expenditure in the third quarter of the same year in the RADP."
"Thereafter, many agencies come to us at the last moment for transferring their earmarked funds," he also said.
Many public agencies revise projects more than once, seeking higher funds and time extension for their execution, which also affects proper outcome from the development work.
The PC will discourage such tendency of the public agencies at the meeting on Tuesday, he added.
Another official said as the project execution performance of the agencies concerned remains at a poor level in the first half of every fiscal year, the minister will also ask them to avoid such practice.
Besides, he will try to find out the factors behind the situation and their possible solutions.
The Ministry of Planning officials said the agencies usually take time during the first few months of a FY to start implementation of their projects. In the last half, implementation speed of most of the projects gets pace.
In the current FY, the public agencies are implementing some 1,564 projects under the Tk 2.02-trillion ADP. In the last FY, the agencies implemented some 1,978 projects under the Tk 1.76-trillion RADP.
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