Govt urged to solve port problems soon

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FE Report
Experts, academics and business leaders at a dialogue Thursday urged the government for immediately solving all the problems of Chittagong port and initiate a simple business procedure to protect the country's trading sector.
They said though the Chittagong port is the lifeline of the country, it has long been ill-managed and it has become very difficult for the country to handle the port.
Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a civil society think-tank, organised the dialogue Division (IMED) data showed that all the government agencies have spent only Tk 31.25 billion during July-September period in FY2010 from their total Tk 305 billion original ADP outlay.
The government has framed an "ambitious" Tk 385 billion development budget for the current FY2011 to execute 916 projects under the ADP in order to build up country's poor infrastructure and improve social security for steering the national economy.
The senior planning ministry official said water resources and agriculture ministries, bridge division, roads and rail division and power division have performed poorly which affected the overall project implementation rates in the first quarter.
The ministries and divisions are in the top 10 budget-holder list as those obtained 77 per cent of the total Tk 385 billion ADP budget this fiscal.
The government took some strict measures in July, first month of current fiscal, to widen the capacity of the agencies as those fail in timely procurement, a major element of development acts.
The planning ministry has already issued some guidelines to the development budget spenders taking their monthly action and procurement plans in order to streamline the development project implementations, ministry officials said.
"The major spenders have failed to utilise enough fund which hit the overall implementation scenario in first quarter this year though they have received about 80 per cent of the total development budget outlay," a senior IMED official told the FE.
"It is very unfortunate for our economy. We are still at the same position as a decade ago. I am doubtful about what is in the fate of our economy in the coming days," Mirza Azizul Islam, a former finance and planning adviser told the FE.