PRS Implementation Forum to meet in city next month

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FE Report
The issue of good governance will receive top priority during discussions in the next PRS (poverty reduction strategy) Implementation Forum as donors review the reforms undertaken by the present caretaker administration, official sources said.
According to the sources, the biennial PRS Implementation Forum will be held in Dhaka on November 18-19 where the government and the donors' would discuss on five key agenda including good governance.
Sources in the Finance Ministry said that disaster management would also come up in the discussions during the two-day Forum as Bangladesh was still recovering from successive floods during July-October period.
At a meeting of the Local Consultative Group (LCG), a platform of the donors and Economic Relations Division (ERD), on October 9, its chairperson and the country director of the World Bank Dhaka office, Xian Zhu, underlined the need for creating an "emergency fund" for fighting against any type of disaster in the country.
His proposal can be considered as an important plan in the next PRS Forum, the finance ministry sources said adding, some other issues including poverty alleviation, power and health would also be discussed.
The sources noted that the donor community might advise the government to overhaul the civil administration, characterised by inefficiency and corruption.
A senior Finance Ministry official told the FE that all the bilateral and multilateral donors working in Bangladesh would inquire about the present status of the national economy and political affairs in Bangladesh.
He said: "Since the development partners support Bangladesh for different development programmes, they will inquire about the country's state of economy, political affairs and reforms."
The official stated that although the Forum was supposed to review the implementation of the poverty reduction strategy (PRS), already extended by another year, there had been "little headway" since the last Forum.
The last PRS Implementation Forum was held between November 15 and 17 in 2005 in Dhaka.
The official, however, expressed the opinion that the caretaker administration should not be blamed for lack of progress, as political unrest last year put a damper on the PRS implementation.
Critics say the PRS itself remains merely a document, given the fact there is no sectoral allocation for implementing the plan.
The representatives of LCG are likely to review the implementation of an 11-point agenda agreed upon in the last Forum in 2005, the finance ministry official said.
"The government has acted on almost all the agenda. The implementation of the rest is in progress," the official pointed out.
Civil service reform, making PRS the guiding document for budgetary allocations, increase of block allocations for local government bodies and implementation of procurement act are among the pending issues the donor groups will take up in the forum, the official said.
He stated the government might request the donors to extend their support to different reform works in the form of "budgetary support" as it had undertaken some ambitious reform works in the civil administration and political system.
The government side is likely also to raise the issues of dwindling foreign aid flow in recent years and aid harmonisation and effectiveness, the source added.
PRS forum is successor to Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) that held its deliberations until 2005.
BDF meetings used to be co-chaired by the finance minister and a representative of the donor groups.
But there has been a marked change in case of PRS Forum where the ERD, the coordinating agency for the donors, is the main organiser of the event, with the Bangladesh government being in the driving seat.