Foreign-funded projects under interim govt's close scrutiny

The foreign-funded projects have come under interim government's close scrutiny as it wants to drop less-important and low-priority projects from the ongoing and pipeline lists, officials said on Wednesday.
The Economic Relations Division (ERD) this time has started scrutiny of the foreign-funded projects as the current interim government is very selective in undertaking the development works based on merit and their proper return, they said.
The less-priority and non-important projects, funded by development partners, would be scrapped from the pipeline and only the priority ones will be included, ERD officials said.
"We've recently requested the ministries concerned to specify their priority and important projects for getting foreign funds to streamline the quality development work," ERD Secretary Shahriar Kader Siddiki told the FE.
After getting the list, we will sit in a tripartite meeting between the ERD, the ministry and the development partners concerned for finalising the priority and important projects, he said.
Meanwhile, the ERD has recently sought the priority projects list from different government which has relevance, effectiveness and implementable ones.
The ongoing projects mean those which are in the implementation stage with the foreign loans or grants.
Another ERD official said: "The ongoing projects are difficult to scrap, but the newly approved or those in the pipeline could be reviewed for determining their fate in the Bangladesh's development programme."
He said the projects which have merit would be encouraged and the less important or motivated projects would be scrapped or discouraged.
For example, the information ministry with the financial support from China had got approval of a project for setting up six full-fledged TV stations at a cost of Tk 13.19 billion which is virtually not viable.
"So, we've asked the information ministry to review it and rationalize the DPP," he added.
Out of the Tk 13.19 billion cost, China is supposed to provide Tk 9.88 billion loan for the TV station setting up project.
Once the Bangladesh Railway put forth a project for setting up a railway line from Chattogram to Kaptai for searching external funds, but we declined it because of its lack of viability, the ERD official said.
"Actually, we need priority and important projects for the country first, then gradually we could go for taking up moderate category projects based on the availability of funds and their cost of investment," the official said.
Another ERD official said the government is now in trouble with the Indian Line of Credit (LoC)-supported projects as those are struggling with implementation delays for several reasons.
He said: "Railway and some other ministries had taken up dozens of projects which do not have feasibility study. Some projects were taken on political consideration."

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