With no end in sight for the ongoing political stalemate, the continuing cost for maintaining law and order across the country is taking its toll on the government, Finance Ministry sources have said.
As funding requests from different government agencies keep piling up at the Finance Division, officials said only around half of the requests had been granted so far.
“We are facing tremendous pressure, regarding funding demands of Tk154.3 crore, from the Home Ministry, Railways Ministry, and Roads and Highways Division. However, as of now, the [Finance] division has only disbursed Tk86.3 crore from the fund for unexpected expenditures,” said a top-ranking Finance Division official.
Seeking anonymity, the official added that 95% of the Tk1,500 crore unexpected expenditure fund has been released between July last year and the end of January this year.
“The main problem with spending money to tackle unrest is that the authorities can never be sure how long the unrest will last. They can only allocate money from the budget for a specific number of days. The disbursement cannot go on forever,” the official said.
Sources in the Finance Division also told the Dhaka Tribune that Finance Minister AMA Muhith had directed authorities concerned to immediately release funds to the ministries concerned for enforcing law and order during the ongoing blockade and hartals.
Since the blockade began on January 6, the Home Ministry has sought Tk83.5 crore from the ministry for fuel and patrolling costs of law enforcement officers, but had seen only Tk38 crore released from the unexpected expenditure fund.
The Home Ministry reportedly sought the amount on an emergency basis to meet additional expenses during the blockade that had been spent on food, transport, vehicle requisition, fuel, and allowances for the law enforcers.
Under the latest disbursement of the unexpected expenditure fund, the Finance Division disbursed Tk4.5 crore for Border Guard Bangladesh against its Tk14.5 crore demand; Tk20.8 crore to the Bangladesh Police for purchasing snacks for its officials; Tk13 crore to the Railway Ministry’s Tk26 crore request for deploying Ansar and VDP forces to protect the rail tracks, and Tk10 crore to the Roads and Highways Division for deploying Ansar and VDP forces to protect the highways.
For the Tk86.3 crore already disbursed by the Finance Division for different packages sought by respective ministries and divisions, the amount would be readjusted in the revised budget for the current fiscal year.
“Unless the government and the opposition parties reach a political consensus to end the political turmoil, the budget might suffer a big financial wound as the government is pouring a great number of funds to ensure law and order across the country,” said former caretaker government adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune yesterday, he said the non-development expenditures of the budget may increase further due to the sudden surge of need for ensuring law and order during the blockade and hartals. On another note, Mirza Aziz also pointed out that huge subsidies given to run the rental power plants had created finance mismanagement in the budget over the last couple of years.
According to Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates, the recent series of blockade and hartals are causing a daily loss of Tk2,277.86 crore to the country’s economy. The amount of daily loss would be Tk2,500 crore if 25% of the total industrial production loss was also taken into account.