The non-government organisations predict tough times ahead as the brewing political turmoil in the country casts doubt on the releasing of funds by international donors.
Up until now, the NGOs have received commitments for funds worth only $639.8m for the 2013-14 fiscal for 1084 approved projects to be implemented in the 2014-15 fiscal. This figure is down 31.89% from the 2012-13 fiscal’s commitment of $939.3m for 1077 projects.
The commitments that the donor agencies and countries make to the NGOs are generally released in the following fiscal year.
On that count, the donors released $677.5m in 2013-14, still higher than the commitment made for the corresponding fiscal.
“The political turmoil may be a huge factor. Besides, the economic recession in Europe is another reason why commitments were affected,” Samsul Huda, former director of the Federation of NGOs in Bangladesh (FNB) told the Dhaka Tribune.
Huda, also the executive director of the Association of Land Reform Development (ALRD), said: “Traditionally, Bangladeshi NGOs get some of the funds from countries like Canada and the United Kingdom. But this year, they too have curbed the commitments.”
According to statistics published by the NGO Affairs Bureau, there has been a steady rise in the commitments made during the previous four fiscal years that the current government has been in power.
In the 2009-10 fiscal, commitment was $414m which rose by 64.56% in the following fiscal to $681.3m.
In the 2011-12 fiscal, commitment was $725.6m, which climbed by 29.45% in the following fiscal to $939.3m.
Insiders from the NGO sector said the relative political calm in the last four years due to the presence of a democratic government had encouraged the donors to make healthy commitments.
However, with the political turmoil feared ahead, donors were not sure any more about the fate of their investment in Bangladeshi NGOs, sources said.
One source, however, claimed that: “Donor funding is not declining; rather some of them are preferring to allocate the funds through government projects, instead of the NGOs.”
He said the reason for this could be that the NGOs had not been very compliant enough in recent times and hence some of the funds have moved to government projects.
Some of the leading figures from the NGO sector have also blamed the tough bureaucratic systems and corruption in NGO affair bureau for the unsatisfactory performance.
Md Nurun Nabi Talukder, director general of the NGO Affairs Bureau, however, denied the allegations. “We are always ready to cooperate with the NGOs. They bring foreign currency for the country. So we always try to help them with all kinds of hurdles. Then again, we also need to be sure about the source of money for these funds.”
The government has recently tightened its monitoring of the sources of funds of the NGOs after some of these organisations had been linked with bringing in funds for militant groups.
Since 1990, the NGO Affairs Bureau has released a total of $5.99bn, up against a commitment of $7.55bn for 20,080 approved projects.
Till July this year, a total of 2,243 NGOs have been active in the country.
The government has, at different times, cancelled the registrations of 502 NGOs, of which, the registrations of 483 had been cancelled during the tenure of the current government.
