The government downsized the annual development budget to Tk 2.07 trillion with cuts in foreign assistance by Tk 175 billion, as foreign-aided projects lost gear into lax execution.
On Wednesday, the National Economic Council (NEC) approved the Tk 2.07-trillion revised annual development programme (RADP) for the current fiscal year with an overall cut in the outlay by 7.89 per cent.
The original ADP size for FY 2021-22 was Tk 2.25 trillion.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over the NEC meeting, held at the Planning Commission (PC). After the meeting, Planning Minister MA Mannan told journalists that the NEC approved the RADP with the fund trimming.
Planning Secretary Pradip Ranjan Chakraborty said the NEC cut the project assistance (PA) but not the available outlay from the government internal resources for the newly approved RADP.
"The PA has been trimmed down by Tk 177.74 billion to Tk 702.50 billion in the revised development budget," he says.
However, the Tk 1.37-trillion outlay from government's internal resources has been unchanged in the newly approved RADP, Mr Chakraborty adds.
"Fifty-eight ministries and agencies demanded higher funds of Tk 1.57 trillion from the government's internal resources. However, they sought lower funds worth Tk 698.91 billion from the PA for the RADP. But we have not been able to allocate higher funds from government's internal resources," he says about the revised development-spending arithmetic.
Also, the NEC approved a Tk 96.13-billion RADP outlay for the autonomous and semi-autonomous public bodies from the current Tk 114.69-billion allocations in the ADP.
Meanwhile, when asked about the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on project implementation, especially on Rooppur nuclear power plant, Planning Minister Mr Mannan said: "As of now, I am not seeing any impact on the scheme."
He, however, adds that if the war lingered, there could be some impact on project execution in the long run. "Experts and researchers will be the best persons for prediction."
The planning minister says all the government ministries and agencies executed 30.21 per cent of the ADP during the first seven months (July 2021 to Jan 2022) of the current FY2022, which is nearly 2 percentage points higher than last fiscal's rate.
In the RADP approved Wednesday 1,770 development projects have been kept with inclusions.
In the original ADP, the total number of projects was 1,534.
Local Government Division has attained the highest Tk 343.50 billion worth of outlay, followed by Road Transport and Highways Division Tk 282.92 billion, power division Tk 227.24 billion, and the science and technology ministry Tk 158.94 billion in the RADP.
In the last FY2021, the PC finalised the RADP trimming down the allocations by Tk 75 billion to Tk 1.97 trillion from Tk 2.05 billion.
In the previous FY2020, the government had revised the ADP outlay to Tk1.93 trillion from that of Tk2.02 trillion original outlays.
