The pace of government spending on development for improving living standards remained slow as usual in nine months of the current fiscal year.
In next three months, the government will have to implement 57%, which is seemingly difficult.
During July-March in the current fiscal year, the government spent only 43% or Tk36,923 crore out of total Tk80,315 crore allocated for the entire year for development, according to the Planning Ministry.
The implementation rate was 40% or Tk22,937 crore of the total allocation in the same period a year earlier, said the Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday.
It has become a tradition that the ministries and public agencies spend less in the first half or so of the fiscal year and speed up spending in the last two months, experts said.
As a result, the probability of wastage of resources is high and quality of works is questionable, they said.
Ecnec okays three projects worth Tk 637 crore
The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) yesterday approved three development projects valued Tk637 crore including procurement of two passenger launches for Dhaka-Barisal routes.
The approval came at the Ecnec meeting at the NEC conference room with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.
Of the total project cost of Tk636.96 crore, the government will provide Tk622.51 crore and the agencies concerned Tk14 crore.
After the meeting, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said a total of six development projects, of which three related to Dhaka City Corporations, were supposed to be placed before the Ecnec.
“The Ecnec dropped the three projects considering that the approval of those projects would contradict the election rules of city corporations.” The Election Commission has already declared the schedule of Dhaka North, South and Chittagong City Corporations election, which would be held on April 28.
A project worth Tk72.24 crore was approved to locally build two launches and each will have 764 passengers’ capacity to improve communication in waterway in Dhaka-Barisal route. Later, the operation of those launches would be extended to Khulna.
The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation (BIWRC) has a total of six launches in its fleet, five of which have become outdated.
The meeting approved another project “Upgradation of Bimanbandar Bypass Intersection-Lalbag-Salutikar-Companyganj-Bholaganj Road into National Highway” involving Tk441 crore. Under the project, a total of 32km road will be upgraded into national highways to facilitate transportation of stone as 70% of the total stone is collected from Bholaganj. Roads and Highways Division will implement the project by February 2018.
Another Tk123.18 crore project – Construction of Primary Infrastructures of Stadium in Upazila Level – was approved.
The National Sports Council will implement the project by June 2016.
