The Planning Commission is working on framing the Annual Development Programmer, or ADP, for the fiscal year, 2020-21 with an eye on rebuilding the economy, unsettled by coronavirus and shutdown, officials said on Monday.
"Three areas will get the highest priority in the next ADP," planning secretary Nurul Amin told the FE, naming coronavirus, agriculture and social safety-net.
The commission has started framing the development programme for the next fiscal and aims to finalise it by the end of next month, he said.
The pandemic has hit Bangladesh's development work and the economy for more than a month.
The government has been forced to suspend all development work, daily movement and economic activities of the country since March 26 to slow the transmission of COVID-19, the illness caused by the deadly coronavirus.
Mr Amin said they issued a guideline on March 25, just a day before the shutdown, to the ministries and divisions so that they can send their projects' list to the Planning Commission.
The ministries and divisions are sending their project lists and fund requirement for the next fiscal accordingly, he said.
"Now we are examining the lists online. As we have the online e-filing system, we are easily sorting out the lists of development projects of the ministries and divisions," he said, adding the projects are now being scrutinised.
"We are doing office at the Planning Commission and are working on the coming ADP," Mr Amin told the FE.
The secretary told this correspondent that they had already received project lists from 55 ministries, divisions and agencies out of total 58.
He is hopeful of getting projects' lists from the remaining three ministries and divisions within this month, Mr Amin said.
Soon after getting the resources for the upcoming ADP from the Ministry of Finance, the commission would finalise the upcoming ADP, he added.
Another senior commission official said since the coronavirus has struck Bangladesh's economy, the ADP would focus on rehabilitating and expanding the social safety-net programmes in the upcoming ADP.
Still, the ongoing priority development projects, including the fast-track and mega projects, would not be overlooked.
The official said that they would not welcome the less-priority and even moderately important projects for the next development budget as the country needs the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the economy.
The government has already decided to divert allocated funds from the less-priority and moderately important development projects of the FY2020 ADP to the highest priority areas to help speed up economic recovery.
The original size of the current ADP was Tk 2.02 trillion, which was trimmed to Tk 1.93 trillion in early March this year.
The government ministries and agencies have implemented 37 per cent of ADP in first eight months (July-March) of the current fiscal.
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