Officials cited "weak project-implementation capacity" for massive cuts in the development budget for education and health, for which there have been wide-scale suggestions for increasing spending.
The allocation for the health sector has been slashed by 25.53 per cent and for the education sector by 42.35 per cent, Planning Commission officials said.The National Economic Council (NEC) in a meeting, presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, trimmed the ADP for the current fiscal year (FY) 2023-24, following lower rates of project implementation also for one major reason that it's election year-apart from capacity lacking.
According to sources, there are also shortages in mobilising funds largely because of gaps between revenue-collection target and real receipts that may cause budget downsizing.
The overall Revised Annual Development Programme (RADP) is down by Tk 180 billion or 6.84 per cent from the original Tk 2.63-trillion outlay, Planning Minister Abdus Salam told journalists while emerging from the NEC meeting.
He said out of the Tk2.45 trillion worth of RADP outlay, Tk 1.61 trillion will be financed from government's own resources and the remaining Tk835 billion from the external sources as project aid (PA).
In the original ADP, the outlay from the government internal resources was Tk 1.63 trillion and that from the external resources was Tk 940 billion.
The NEC cut the allocation for the education sector at a higher rate to Tk 172.299 billion in the RADP for the current FY2024 from its original allocation of Tk 298.89 billion in the ADP.
It also cut a large amount of Tk 41.37 billion from the allocation for the educations sector from its original allocation of Tk 162.04 billion in the ADP.
Also revised down is the development-budget outlay for the state-owned autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies to Tk 93.91 billion from Tk 116.74 billion in the original ADP.
Considering the allocation of the autonomous bodies and corporations, the overall size of the RADP for the upcoming FY2024 will be Tk 2.54 trillion, the PC officials said.
Planning officials say since the project-execution performance of the ministries and their agencies is still remained bleak, they were "forced to cut the original ADP for streamlining its implementation".
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