A huge number of fresh projects has been proposed for inclusion in the upcoming revised annual development programme (RADP) for the current fiscal year (FY 2023-24), leaving the Planning Commission (PC) in a complicated situation, officials said.
The government ministries and divisions have demanded inclusion of around 1,600 new development projects in the RADP without fund allocations, they added.
A total of 1,048 fresh development projects without fund allocations and 1,302 ongoing projects with fund allocations have been incorporated in the Tk 2.63 trillion ADP for the current FY.
Usually, the PC processes the development project proposals from the priority list of freshly incorporated projects and places those for approval by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).
The PC has scheduled a week-long programming committee meeting from January 25 to scrutinise the fresh priority projects proposed for inclusion in the RADP.
"The meeting is to select the projects from the massive list. We'll try to accommodate the priority ones only," said a PC official.
The PC has started working on revising the ADP for streamlining the projects amid lower implementation rate.
"The ministries and divisions are so crazy to incorporate the projects in the RADP that each of them has sent a lot of projects to the PC. We are now puzzled with the huge list," said another official.
The ministries of education, agriculture, water resources, and shipping, and local government and roads and highways divisions are ahead of others in terms of the number of fresh projects for the RADP.
It would be really tough and time consuming to select the top priority projects, the PC official added.
Many fresh projects proposed by different ministries were taken on political considerations, said another official.
The government ministries and agencies should give focus on executing their ongoing projects rather than taking up politically-motivated and less-priority ones, he added.
Usually, the fresh projects without fund allocations are included in the development budget as the pipeline ones based on national priority.
The planning minister or the government's highest economic policy-making body, ECNEC, later approves those with fund allocations.
In the current ADP, the PC has included 829 fresh projects without fund allocations, expecting money from the government's internal resources, while 219 more new projects are expecting funds from the external resources as project aid.
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