Planning Ministry has favoured the sector-wise fund allocations in national budget instead of making it ministry-wise.
But the Finance Ministry said if the United Nations classification of sectors is followed, the budget funds can be allocated sector-wise, said official sources.
The issue will be discussed at a workshop on the sector-wise budget allocation today at the planning ministry’s auditorium.
Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal will preside over the workshop to be also attended by State Minister for Planning and Finance MA Mannan. The officials of two ministries will participate in the workshop.
Planning ministry thinks if sector-based allocations are made, the utilisation of resources can be accounted properly in performance evaluation. But a Finance Division official said for proper utilisation of the budget funds, the UN-classified 10 sectors need to be adopted.
The two ministries have mismatches in their own classification of sectors, causing overlapping and resultant wastes in the use of budget funds.
“It is true that there is a lack of coordination between finance and planning ministries. Mismatch in defining sectors causes waste of funds. That’s why finance ministry prefers the UN classification,” the official said.
According to the workshop working paper, the planning ministry will highlight 10 thematic groups of sectors included in the Sixth Five-Year Plan.
The groups include raising farm productivity and agricultural growth, diversifying exports and developing a dynamic manufacturing sector, energy development plan to support higher growth and employment, transport services to reduce cost and improve welfare, managing the urban transition, boosting the knowledge economy for higher productivity, education, training, sports, culture and religion, health, population and nutrition sector development programmes, reaching out the poor and the vulnerable population and environment, climatic change and disaster risk management.
Planning Commission said the differences in sectoral divisions by two ministries also create problems in evaluation and monitoring by the Implementation and Monitoring Evaluation Department (IMED).
“The differences in sectoral divisions by the ministries make the monitoring and evaluation by the IMED complicated,” said Planning Commission member M Shamsul Alam.
“It also creates unnecessary burden for the ministries/divisions to come up with different sets of reports for ADP monitoring and evaluation and budget performance reports,” he alleged.