The government has included 959 unapproved fresh development projects in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the next fiscal year (FY) 2014-15 without giving any fund allocations, officials said Saturday.
Presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the National Economic Council (NEC) on May 20 approved the Tk 803.15 billion ADP where the 959 fresh projects were incorporated in addition to the 1,034 ongoing ones for implementation in the next fiscal year.
The newly-approved development budget has incorporated 683 unapproved projects that are proposed to be financed from domestic resources, and another 276 unapproved ones that are expected to be funded by different bilateral and multilateral donors.
The officials involved with the development budget preparation said: "This has been done mostly on political considerations."
"We had to accommodate many of such unapproved projects in the ADP mainly due to political factors. We know that some of these projects are not relevant to the country's development needs and priorities at this stage", a top Planning Commission (PC) official told the FE.
Most of the unapproved projects are for constructing rural roads, bridges and culverts, and expanding power distribution lines which are mostly undertaken by some ministries and agencies under pressure of lawmakers and political leaders, he added requesting anonymity.
The official said: "If the number of the unapproved projects is analysed, it will be found that the highest number of such projects is related to those of the Roads and Highways Department (RHD), the Railway Ministry, the Local Government Division and the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB)."
About 80 unapproved new projects of the Roads and Highways Department, nearly 40 of the Local Government Division, around 25 of the Railway Ministry and about 20 of the BWDB have been included in the next fiscal's ADP.
Professor Shamsul Alam, a member of the PC, said the government has kept aside Tk 15.06 billion 'block allocations' in the Tk 803.12 billion ADP for allocating funds for the newly-approved projects during FY2015.
"When the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approves any unapproved projects included in the new ADP, the PC will allocate funds for them from the block allocations," he told the FE.
Another high official of the PC said most of the unapproved fresh projects in the ADP remain unimplemented every year due to lack of funds, absence of prior proper feasibility studies and poor assessment and examination of their designs.
He said they have no other option but to include hundreds of unapproved projects in the ADP every year without providing allocations against those due to pressure from ministries and divisions and political leaders. "But most such projects remain unimplemented."
"As the projects do not have any proper study about feasibility and design, most of them are not approved ultimately by the proper authorities or are even dropped from the list in the following year." he noted.
Development experts oppose such kinds of initiatives and hold the view that such an inclusion of a large number of unapproved fresh projects in the ADP not only affects quality of work but also creates room for misuse of public funds.
In the Tk 550 billion original ADP of the FY 2012-13, a record number of 1,037 unapproved fresh projects were included without allocation of funds.
"In most cases, very few projects get allocations in the revised ADP or in the following year's ADP, thus, tending to raise the level of public development expenditures at a level higher than the preliminary estimate," the senior PC official said.
A former Planning Division Secretary said since the number of the ongoing projects of the government ministries and divisions has been increasing every year going beyond their implementation capacity, further inclusion of unapproved projects creates additional pressure on the ongoing development works.
The PC should only process those projects which are urgent from the perspective of the country's development needs at the given stage of its growth and should provide specific allocation of funds for them, he added.
