Getting value out of ADPs
Sunday, 14 March 2010
M. U. Ahmed
ANNOUNCEMENT at the beginning of a fiscal year about impressive size of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) does hardly serve any purpose if its implementation rate continues to trail well behind target. The rate of ADP implementation must improve.
The ADP with its largest-ever size was announced last June when the budget for the current fiscal was presented. But that was not much startling in the context of Bangladesh. Successive governments have sought to project a glowing picture of development and economic growth during their tenures through such announcements. But hard assessments present a rather poor spectacle of implementation shortfall with regard to ADP. Non-fulfilment of ADP expenditure targets continue to frustrate lofty development goals.
Success in ADP implementation, however, does not relate to fulfillment of expenditure targets only. Here success must also not be measured primarily on the basis of only how quickly the money is spent. More emphasis should rather be on how 'well' the money is spent. Even if the expenditure targets are fulfilled or overfulfilled, serious shortfalls about expected physical output targets from the same can be a matter of more serious concern.
Ensuring the 'quality' of the ADP projects and programmes calls for their sound conceiving in the first place. If this is not accomplished, then money spent on them are to be considered inefficiencies in use of public resources. Over the years, many ADP projects have tended to be symbolic of such inefficiencies.
Substantial expenditures from the ADP are found to be made on a number of projects as preparatory to starting full-fledged work on them. Such projects and programmes in some cases were, in not too distant past, dependent on resources' availability or commitment, but actual disbursement of foreign funding for them have not always been certain. Year after year, a great deal of resources were, thus, getting consumed in maintaining project sites and paying salaries to staff there, in anticipation that works on these projects and programmes could start. Such practices do need to be discarded if efficient uses of public resources on account of ADP are to be ensured. Otherwise, costs on such projects will be wasteful in a situation where there is no knowing when these ventures will take off or whether these will take off at all.
Even common sense dictates that all ADP programmes need to be started and ended under a strictly defined timeframe, after full availability of funding for them and taking of all preparations to complete them in one-go. Clearly, the first task here in order of importance ought to be selection of projects and programmes after these have been put through cost and benefit analyses and assessed for their rate of returns and are found to be worthwhile. Furthermore, it is imperative for ADP proposals to be cleared through an impartial filtering process to ascertain their true value and their relevance to the strategy for poverty reduction and accelerated growth. The ADP proposals must not be outcome of any 'political designs' to favour individuals and group interests. A rigorous scrutiny can lead to inclusion of really sound proposals in the ADP and that too should be made after finances have been fully lined up to start works on them immediately and to end the same within a stipulated period. These aspects are important to avoid the escalating costs from delays in implementation and to get promptly the benefits from completed projects and programmes.
The government, as stated earlier, announcement an ambitious ADP target for this fiscal year. The rate of its implementation in the first half of the current fiscal does not provide much optimism at this stage about fulfilling its target. However, the coming year's ADP may be on a even large scale, notwithstanding the level of actual performance during the current fiscal. As the saying goes that the taste of the pudding lies in the eating, the larger outlay of resources in the ADP will only be considered reasonable and justified if the rate of its implementation moves to a notably higher level than that of the previous years. For, this is the key factor. No matter how impressive the size of the ADP, if it remains incapable of being largely implemented and the gains to accrue from large scale ADP implementation are denied to the economy, then the declaration of a bigger ADP size is of hardly any real value. Every year the government has been declaring rather, in an unbroken chain, an 'impressive' ADP in size at the beginning of the year only to revise it at its end for less-than-satisfactory pace of implementation.
After the independence of the country, no government could come even near to full implementation of the ADP though the reasons for the poor rate of implementation are easy to identify. Hence, actions that are needed to be taken in response to such problems lingering for long.
It was underlined many times in different forums what things ought to be done such as reduction of bureaucratic cobwebs, increasing of implementation capacity in many areas and getting rid of the procedural snags that hazard ADP implementation. The country could, indeed, benefit a great deal from the ADPs if implementation capacity was raised. In that case, a substantial chunk of resources in the form of external assistance pledged by foreign donors would not have remained in the pipeline for long or would not have gone back in some cases for reasons of poor implementation capacity of the country's so-called development administration.
In this backdrop, the need for creation of conditions for fuller implementation of ADPs, is a pressing one. The government should address this need on a priority. The sooner, the better.
ANNOUNCEMENT at the beginning of a fiscal year about impressive size of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) does hardly serve any purpose if its implementation rate continues to trail well behind target. The rate of ADP implementation must improve.
The ADP with its largest-ever size was announced last June when the budget for the current fiscal was presented. But that was not much startling in the context of Bangladesh. Successive governments have sought to project a glowing picture of development and economic growth during their tenures through such announcements. But hard assessments present a rather poor spectacle of implementation shortfall with regard to ADP. Non-fulfilment of ADP expenditure targets continue to frustrate lofty development goals.
Success in ADP implementation, however, does not relate to fulfillment of expenditure targets only. Here success must also not be measured primarily on the basis of only how quickly the money is spent. More emphasis should rather be on how 'well' the money is spent. Even if the expenditure targets are fulfilled or overfulfilled, serious shortfalls about expected physical output targets from the same can be a matter of more serious concern.
Ensuring the 'quality' of the ADP projects and programmes calls for their sound conceiving in the first place. If this is not accomplished, then money spent on them are to be considered inefficiencies in use of public resources. Over the years, many ADP projects have tended to be symbolic of such inefficiencies.
Substantial expenditures from the ADP are found to be made on a number of projects as preparatory to starting full-fledged work on them. Such projects and programmes in some cases were, in not too distant past, dependent on resources' availability or commitment, but actual disbursement of foreign funding for them have not always been certain. Year after year, a great deal of resources were, thus, getting consumed in maintaining project sites and paying salaries to staff there, in anticipation that works on these projects and programmes could start. Such practices do need to be discarded if efficient uses of public resources on account of ADP are to be ensured. Otherwise, costs on such projects will be wasteful in a situation where there is no knowing when these ventures will take off or whether these will take off at all.
Even common sense dictates that all ADP programmes need to be started and ended under a strictly defined timeframe, after full availability of funding for them and taking of all preparations to complete them in one-go. Clearly, the first task here in order of importance ought to be selection of projects and programmes after these have been put through cost and benefit analyses and assessed for their rate of returns and are found to be worthwhile. Furthermore, it is imperative for ADP proposals to be cleared through an impartial filtering process to ascertain their true value and their relevance to the strategy for poverty reduction and accelerated growth. The ADP proposals must not be outcome of any 'political designs' to favour individuals and group interests. A rigorous scrutiny can lead to inclusion of really sound proposals in the ADP and that too should be made after finances have been fully lined up to start works on them immediately and to end the same within a stipulated period. These aspects are important to avoid the escalating costs from delays in implementation and to get promptly the benefits from completed projects and programmes.
The government, as stated earlier, announcement an ambitious ADP target for this fiscal year. The rate of its implementation in the first half of the current fiscal does not provide much optimism at this stage about fulfilling its target. However, the coming year's ADP may be on a even large scale, notwithstanding the level of actual performance during the current fiscal. As the saying goes that the taste of the pudding lies in the eating, the larger outlay of resources in the ADP will only be considered reasonable and justified if the rate of its implementation moves to a notably higher level than that of the previous years. For, this is the key factor. No matter how impressive the size of the ADP, if it remains incapable of being largely implemented and the gains to accrue from large scale ADP implementation are denied to the economy, then the declaration of a bigger ADP size is of hardly any real value. Every year the government has been declaring rather, in an unbroken chain, an 'impressive' ADP in size at the beginning of the year only to revise it at its end for less-than-satisfactory pace of implementation.
After the independence of the country, no government could come even near to full implementation of the ADP though the reasons for the poor rate of implementation are easy to identify. Hence, actions that are needed to be taken in response to such problems lingering for long.
It was underlined many times in different forums what things ought to be done such as reduction of bureaucratic cobwebs, increasing of implementation capacity in many areas and getting rid of the procedural snags that hazard ADP implementation. The country could, indeed, benefit a great deal from the ADPs if implementation capacity was raised. In that case, a substantial chunk of resources in the form of external assistance pledged by foreign donors would not have remained in the pipeline for long or would not have gone back in some cases for reasons of poor implementation capacity of the country's so-called development administration.
In this backdrop, the need for creation of conditions for fuller implementation of ADPs, is a pressing one. The government should address this need on a priority. The sooner, the better.