The Ministry of Health has once again failed to recover from its decade-long poor performance in spending development budget despite a crying need of improving health services across the country, insiders said on Monday.
The Health Services Division (HSD) under the ministry has implemented only 68.2 per cent of its total outlay, emerging as the lowest spender among the 15 big development-budget holders, they said.
The HSD's poor performance has been all the same for over a decade, although Bangladesh has faced several health emergency situations during the Covid and Dengue outbreaks.
They also emphasised massive needs for upgrading the country's health system down to grassroots level to tackle such exigencies.
The FE analysis has found that when the HSD's 14 other fellow large development budget-holding ministries and divisions spent 82.73 per cent of their respective allocations on an average, its execution was 14.53 per cent lower than the average.
Meanwhile, the government ministries and agencies altogether spent Tk 1.99 trillion, or 84.16 per cent, of the total Tk 2.36-trillion Annual Development Programme (ADP) outlay in last financial year (FY), 2022-23.
In FY 2021-22, they spent Tk 2.03 trillion, or 92.74 per cent, of the total Tk 2.19-trillion outlay.
According to the FE analysis, the HSD, the seventh largest budget-holder, emerged as the worst performer in ADP implementation in the fiscal. It spent only Tk 66.86 billion, or 68.20 per cent, of its total Tk 98.04-billion ADP.
According to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), although the government allocated lower fund in the last ADP, compared to the previous one, due to its poor performance, the Ministry of Health again failed to improve its capacity.
"We've always considered improving health services one of the government's utmost priorities. But the ministry concerned has been failing to perform duly in implementing its development projects, which is a bad news for the country," noted a senior member of the Planning Commission.
"This is really unfortunate. Our situation is very pathetic during the Covid and Dengue pandemics. The ministry should enrich its capacity," he said requesting anonymity.
The ministry has been showing almost the same weakness in its project implementation over the years, he added.
Development analysts and officials said the Ministry of Health's poor capacity, different alleged scams and corruption, and lack of transparency have put Bangladesh in a vulnerable condition during the present Dengue endemic.
They urged the government to restructure the country's health administration for enhancing its project implementation capacity and providing better services to people.
When asked, a senior HSD official told the FE that its project directors are mostly from the physician community, who have little expertise in procurement and project management, resulting in delay in ADP execution.
Besides, lack of proper coordination among different government agencies is also one of the reasons behind the delay in project implementation, he said requesting for anonymity.
Meanwhile, the FE analysis has found that the Ministry of Health never touched the average ADP execution rate in the last 13 years. Rather, its performance was worse than other large budget holders every year.
Besides, the ministry had fallen behind by at least 7.0 percentage points on an average from the overall ADP implantation rate during the last one decade.
In FY 2022, the division implemented 79.06 per cent of its ADP, whereas the rate was the record lowest, 57.88 per cent, in FY 2021, the FE analysis has found.
Despite the little upgradation in FY 2022, the HSD defrayed 68.20 per cent of its total development outlay in FY 2023, 14.53 percentage points down than the average rate of 82.73 per cent.
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