The Ministry of Public Administration (MoPA) has now sought an additional allocation of Tk 4.61 billion for providing interest-free car loan to deputy secretary-level government officials.
It is in addition to the annual budgetary allocation of Tk 400 million which the government has earmarked during the last couple of years for lending to officials at joint-secretary level and above for car buys and maintenance costs.
From the newly sought fund some 1,539 deputy secretaries will be given Tk 3.0 million each as interest-free loans to buy cars.
Besides, these mid-level bureaucrats will be entitled to non-refundable monthly allocation of Tk 50,000 each as cost of maintenance of the cars with their salaries.
The public administration ministry said the buying of such a big number of cars for the deputy secretaries under state arrangement and appointing drivers for them are a long process and costly matter.
It said providing interest-free loan and maintenance cost to those officials is cost-effective compared to state arrangement of vehicles for the DS-level officials.
However, economists and former top government officials think extending the facility of interest-free car loans to deputy-secretary level as unnecessary and waste of public money at a time when government each year faces trouble in arranging funds to meet budget deficit.
Former adviser of a caretaker government Dr Akbar Ali Khan told the FE Tuesday over telephone that when the government thinks that misappropriation of Tk 400 billion from a state-owned bank is not a big matter, the issue of Tk 4.61 billion is really tiny.
"The government possesses huge money, and the said amount is nothing to it," he said.
Actually, billions worth of public money is being "looted" by powerful quarters and the government hardly pays any heed to them, Mr Khan noted.
Research Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem told the FE the government two years back had raised significantly the salary of public servants to ensure their decent living and now providing car facility at deputy-secretary level which will give a big hike to public-sector expenditure.
It has to be taken into consideration whether the government extended the facility to deputy-secretary level to please them at public expense in its own political interest, he said.
"The matter could have been easily taken if there was any arrangement of additional earnings by the government. But how logical such decision is when the government struggles to finance budget deficit every year," Mr Moazzem noted.
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