The government has incorporated a total of 1,287 fresh unapproved projects without fund allocation in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the next fiscal year (FY), 2019-20, mostly without any feasibility study, according to insider sources.
Of the projects, 1,045 fresh unapproved ones have been enlisted with expectation of funding from internal sources, while 242 have been incorporated expecting funding from external sources.
The National Economic Council (NEC) on Tuesday endorsed inclusion of the fresh projects along with 1,475 ongoing projects in the Tk 2.02-trillion ADP for the next FY.
Development experts said most of the projects have been taken up on political consideration and by defying the priority requirement of ensuring development across the country.
The Planning Commission (PC) expressed its reservation regarding the inclusion of such a large number of fresh unapproved projects in the ADP without fund allocation.
It said: "The indiscriminate inclusion of the fresh unapproved projects by different ministries and divisions affects financial discipline and budget management of the government."
Since the ministries and divisions undertake the fresh projects by going beyond their Medium-Term Budgetary Framework (MTBF) fund ceiling, many of those ultimately struggle due to fund shortage, the PC also said in its observation.
Thus their implementation as per the annual action plan is not delivered, it added.
Earlier, the government in the original Tk 1.73-trillion ADP for the current FY included the record 1,664 fresh unapproved projects without fund allocation.
Out of the 1,664 projects, a total of 1,338 were proposed to be financed with internal resources, and the remaining 326 projects were expected to be financed by different bilateral and multilateral foreign donors.
A top official said: "We have been forced to include many of the projects in the ADP due to political pressure. We know that some of these projects are not necessary for the country at this moment."
"If you analyse the list of unapproved projects, you will see that the highest number of those have come from the Roads and Highways Department (RHD), the Local Government Division, the Ministry of Railways, and the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB)."
The highest 158 fresh unapproved projects have been incorporated for the Road Transport and Highways Division, which is higher than the number of its approved schemes included in the ADP for FY 20.
More than 100 projects each have been included in the ADP for the Bangladesh Railway, the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), and the BWDB for the next fiscal.
"Most of the fresh unapproved projects in the ADP remain unimplemented every year due to lack of adequate fund allocation, proper feasibility study and design," said another official requesting anonymity.
The PC official said they had no other option but to include hundreds of unapproved projects in the development budget every year without providing allocation - following pressure from the ministers and political leaders. But most of such projects remain unimplemented at the end.
"The projects are included without proper feasibility study and design, and ultimately most of these are not approved by the proper authorities or are dropped from the list in the following year," he added.
Development experts have opposed this kind of initiatives by the government, saying such inclusion of projects not only affects quality of work, but also creates scope for misappropriation of public funds.
Development analyst Dr Mirza Azizul Islam said most of the fresh projects are included on "political consideration" and without any feasibility study.
Subsequently, the projects do not get adequate funds after approval by the government, thus resulting in cost and time overrun and making poor impact on national development.
He said the government should not opt for such inclusion of unapproved projects every year. Rather, it should work in depth to improve quality of the ongoing project work.
A member of the PC said: "In most cases very few of such projects get allocation in the revised ADP or in the following year's ADP, thus raising cost from the preliminary estimation."
Ultimately, inclusion of a large number of fresh projects in the ADP cannot bring good results, the official added.
The number of projects of the ministries and divisions is gradually increasing every year against their poor implementation capacity. So, further inclusion of unapproved projects creates additional pressure on execution of the ongoing projects.
"The Planning Commission should only entertain the projects, which are very urgent, and should provide project specific allocations," he added.
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