Development projects are set to come under strict monitoring as a high-powered government committee will travel outside Dhaka to oversee the implementation work from early next month, officials said on Saturday.
The main focus of the committee's monitoring initiatives would be on quality and timely execution of development projects, they said.
The Planning Minister and the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) secretary will sit with the project executing agencies and relevant authorities in the divisional towns outside Dhaka from early next month.
"We've decided to begin monitoring and evaluation of the projects under the current Annual Development Programme (ADP). We will sit in Khulna with the project implementing agencies in those areas on February 7," IMED Secretary Abul Mansur Md. Faizullah told the FE.
"Gradually we will sit in all remaining divisional towns with the project implementing agencies in those areas," he said.
Planning Minister MA Mannan is expected to attend all the project monitoring meetings, the secretary added.
Most of the development projects are witnessing implementation delays, overrunning both estimated costs and execution time.
Besides, allegations are also rife that many agencies compromise on quality of work on the development projects.
"The Prime Minister is very strict about the quality of work under the projects. In the last ECNEC meeting she directed us to ensure quality and timely execution of the projects. So, we will be very cautious about those issues this time," Mr Faizullah said.
"Actually we will gather knowledge from the implementing agencies about their challenges and their action plan on project execution. We'll try to resolve the obstacles through coordination with other agencies. At the end, we'll ask the agencies to implement the projects in time maintaining quality," said the secretary.
"From now on, we'll discourage the agencies from getting the projects' costs and durations revised. Rather, we'll encourage them to implement the projects at the originally estimated costs," Mr Faizullah said.
Earlier, the IMED indentified some key obstacles to project implementation, including land acquisition and procurement delays, complex tender procedures, complex bidding and procurement document approval process, and a lack of coordination among the agencies.
Development analysts said lack of quality work as well as cost and time overruns became a common phenomenon of the government's development project work, dimming the prospects for financial and economic returns.
Officials at the Planning Commission (PC) and the Economic Relations Division (ERD) said they had taken several measures to expedite project implementation by the agencies concerned.
However, the progress in work was still poor, especially in the event of mega projects across the country, they said.
A senior PC official said many large ministries and divisions requested them to lower the annual allocations for their ongoing projects for the current fiscal year.
The government agencies also sought cuts in the allocations of their external resources in the current ADP outlay, as they failed to implement their projects as per the action plan and target, said an ERD official.
According to the IMED, the public agencies had failed to improve their project execution capabilities, as their execution rate had not improved over the last three years.
In the first half (July-Dec) of the current fiscal year (July 2018-June 2019), the public agencies implemented only 27 per cent of the ADP.
Similarly, the project execution rates were also similar in the previous two fiscal years -in FY2018 and in FY2017.
