Donors sit with govt in mid-Nov to learn about PRS status

FE Team | Published: September 15, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

FE Report
Bangladesh's donors will sit with the government in mid-November in the capital to take stock of the implementation status of the poverty reduction strategy (PRS), which was extended by one year.
The bi-yearly PRS Implementation Forum, slated for November 18-19, is being organised at a time when an inflationary build-up and a prolonged flood have risked slowing down the economic growth.
Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed is tentatively scheduled to open the forum at a city hotel, while Finance and Planning Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam is to chair the plenary sessions during the two-day meet.
"This will be the first ever PRS forum when a caretaker government is running the country," a senior Economic Relations Division official said.
The official acknowledged that although the forum was supposed to review the implementation of the anti-poverty plan, 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.
He, however, insisted the interim administration should not be blamed for lack of progress, as political unrest late last year put a damper on the PRS implementation.
Critics say the PRS itself remains merely a document, given the fact that there is no sectoral allocation for implementing the plan.
The representatives of the Local Consultative Group (LCG), a platform of bilateral and multilateral donors, are likely to review the implementation of an 11-point agenda agreed upon in the last forum, ERD officials said.
"The government has acted on almost the whole agenda. Implementation of the rest of the agenda is in progress," an 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 group will take up in the forum, officials said.
They noted that the donor community might press the government side to overhaul the civil administration, characterised by inefficiency and corruption.
"But the civil service reform is a long-term process. It can't be achieved overnight," he added.
"In case of reforms in the budgetary allocations, there are trade-offs. Political economy is also an important factor. So it will take time to implement those reforms," the ERD official said.
Referring to the public procurement reform, he said the government agency, responsible for implementing the reform, is moving ahead with the plan to put in place electronic procurement as well as e-tendering.
Officials said the government side is to raise the issues of dwindling foreign aid flow in recent years and aid harmonisation and effectiveness.
The PRS forum is successor to the Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF), which has been discontinued since 2005.
The BDF meets used to be co-chaired by finance minister and a representative of the donors.
But there has been a marked change in case of the PRS forum where the ERD used to be the main organiser of the event, with the Bangladesh government being in the driving seat.