Planning Minister MA Mannan has expressed his optimism about achieving cent per cent implementation rate in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) of the current fiscal year (FY23) despite the impacts of the war (Russia-Ukraine) and ongoing economic recovery from the pandemic.
"Our target for attaining ADP implementation rate is 100 per cent. We don't want to achieve a less than cent per cent implementation rate. But, quite often we can't reach to that landmark," he said.
The planning minister said this while talking to a group of journalists at his ministry office in the capital's Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area on Wednesday, reports BSS.
He said that the implementation rate sometimes exceeds 100 per cent in case of any individual project, but on the whole the implementation rate hovers around 92 to 94 per cent at the year's end.
"The month of December is passing and hopefully we'll achieve cent per cent implementation rate at the end of the fiscal year. But, it's quite difficult now to say exactly to what per cent it will reach," Mannan said, adding that no country in the world could reach 100 per cent implementation rate in their development programme even advanced economies like England.
Mannan said although there is a perception among the commoners that there is often delay in the project implementation process, the government is not concerned over the matter.
According to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Ministry of Planning, the ADP implementation rate during the July-October period of the current fiscal year (FY23) reached 12.64 per cent with an expenditure of Tk 323.58 billion.
The ADP implementation rate during the July-October period of the last fiscal year (FY22) totalled 13.06 per cent with an expenditure of Tk 309.19 billion. The total ADP allocation in the current fiscal year is Tk 2.56 trillion.
Asked about the current trend of foreign aid flow to Bangladesh, the minister said that there is a huge pipeline of foreign aid to Bangladesh and the government is trying to avail that support through various means.
But, he said the austerity measures of the government might have reduced slightly the demand of (foreign aid) for which there could have been an impact on the overall commitments and disbursements.
He also cited delay in land acquisition as one of the major problems towards the smooth implementation of the development schemes.
Mannan said that the government machinery especially the Ministry of Land has pursued many means like the digitisation of the land records system, but those could hardly minimize the hassles in the land acquisition process.
He also informed that the government is trying to ensure that the project directors remain in their respective project sites to ensure smooth supervision of projects.
Asked whether the shortage of US dollars is putting an impact on the implementation of development projects, the minister replied in negative adding that alongside the project assistance portion, the government is also trying to utilise fully the fund from the Government of Bangladesh portion in the ADP.
