RHD busy with bagful of extra projects to push thru

The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) appears to be in a race to incorporate a large number of new development projects into the Revised Annual Development Programme (RADP) although there is no allocation of fund for fresh ones, officials said Wednesday.
Planning Commission (PC) officials said they are under pressure from RHD officials to include fresh projects in the next RADP in addition to ongoing projects of the original ADP for the current financial year (FY) 2014-15.
The Commission has got a list of more than 70 fresh projects of RHD from the Road Transport and Bridges Ministry to include in the revised ADP, a senior PC official told the FE.
 "But the Road Transport and Bridges Ministry will not get any extra funds in the RADP for fresh projects," he said, requesting anonymity.
Actually when the RADP will be finalised, there will be no scope to allocate funds for any fresh project within this financial year, the official added.
The PC is working to revise the current Tk 803.15 billion ADP against the backdrop of poor rate of execution of projects by ministries, divisions and agencies during the first half (July-December) period of the current FY2015.
Another senior PC official said: "In most of the cases fresh projects of the transport sector are taken on political considerations. Sometimes, political pressure hampers fund allocation to priority projects of the government."
The RHD has nearly 117 projects in the original ADP while another 10 were approved during the July-January period this fiscal.
Usually, the ongoing projects are included in the ADP with certain fund allocation for their implementation. Besides, the new projects approved within a financial year are included in the RADP in the last half of a fiscal.
When RADP is finalised, there is no scope to add projects and funds for them too, PC officials said.
"Since RADP is expected to be finalised within this month, February, why the government will include such huge number of fresh projects in the revised development budget without any fund allocation?" questioned another senior PC official.
Meanwhile, a Road Transport and Bridges ministry official said inclusion of the fresh projects in the RADP without any specific fund allocation has been a tradition of Bangladesh.
"We have sent some priority projects of the transport sector to PC for inclusion in the RADP. If any fresh project to be included in the RADP, we sometimes shift unutilised funds from the ongoing projects to the newly approved ones," said the official.
The Roads and Highways Division has obtained Tk 42.98-billion allocation in the original ADP for the current FY2015, the sixth highest among the all ministries and divisions in the development budget.
In the original Tk 803.15 billion ADP, a total of 93 fresh projects of the RHD are included without any specific fund allocation for them.
The PC allocated nearly Tk 5.0 billion as block allocation in the original ADP aimed at allocating the money against newly approved projects from the list of fresh projects.
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