Magic wands at work?

The ministries and other government agencies as usual got their respective magic wands during the penultimate and final months of the just concluded fiscal year (FY), 2015-16, and spent (?) 42.5 per cent of the total allocations, Tk 390 billion, under the revised annual development programme (RADP).
The planning ministry claims that the implementation rate of the RADP, involving a total allocation of Tk 910 billion, for the immediate fiscal year was 92.5 per cent.
As per the claim of the ministry, the development project executing agencies spent Tk 101.49 billion in May last and to take the execution rate to 92.5 per cent, they had to spend a sum of Tk 288.63 billion in the month of June alone.
Such a spending binge comes in contrast to the rates at which they had spent development funds between the months of July and April in fiscal 2015-16. In the first month of fiscal 2015-16, July, the ministries and other executing agencies could spend a paltry amount of Tk 25.33 billion and even during the dry season of the year, the development spending was at a very low level. Tk 66.81 billion was the highest amount they could spend in March. The dry season is considered the best period for development project implementation.
A planning ministry official reportedly blamed the monsoon for spending a poor amount in the initial months of the last fiscal. If that was so, why did the government agencies perform poorly in the dry season? And how could they spend more than Tk 288 billion in June last, the first month of the ongoing rainy season?
To be honest, there is serious lack of transparency on the part of the government about the development fund spending. The statistics dished out by the planning ministry about development project execution in a given fiscal year are based on the release of funds, not on their physical progress. In the final month, the government usually disburses a large chunk of development fund at one-go, thus, pushing up the rate of 'project implementation'!
The utilisation of the funds released against various projects in the final months of a given fiscal year is thus carried forward to the next year. Besides, money is spent at a rapid pace in some cases to complete projects within a fiscal, at the cost of quality of work. Pilferage and wastage of resources are very common in this type of hasty project execution.
There are lots of factors hindering execution of development projects.  The lack of the required level of capacity on the part of relevant ministries and agencies for efficient and timely execution of development projects remains at the top of all the hurdles.  
However, the problems are very much known to the policymakers, high officials and people involved in project execution at the field level. Volumes have been said about the deficiencies in development project execution, but the situation has remained more or less unchanged.
The incumbent finance minister is one individual who has been talking about the problem every now and then. For instance, in the budget speech he delivered on June 4, 2015, he had dedicated a long paragraph on the implementation of the ADP. He informed the House about the formation of a taskforce to monitor implementation of development projects by ten large ministries, arrangement for holding tripartite meetings on a quarterly basis for dealing with the problem of slow disbursement of project aid by the donors and steps taken to accelerate the implementation pace of 50 slow-moving projects.
"We will also take steps to strengthen coordination among all stakeholders and avoid the rush of expenditures at the end of a fiscal year. In addition, we are also laying emphasis on prioritisation of projects, and monitoring their implementation on a regular basis. Besides, we are actively considering a pool of project directors from among efficient and experienced officers", the minister had said.
Despite all these promised steps, the rate of ADP fund utilisation during the first ten months of the last fiscal was the lowest in five years.
The finance minister in his speech, delivered immediately before the adoption of the budget for the current FY, 2016-17, by Parliament also promised to make some structural changes in the matters of project formulation and implementation.
The changes would include completion of some preparatory work, including acquisition of land, wherever necessary, prior to the approval of development projects. Besides, after a gap of one year, he again talked about the appointment of separate project directors and framing of rules to this effect. One will have to wait to see how things progress during the current FY as far as ADP execution is concerned.
    [email protected]