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Six ministries and agencies could not spend even half of their development work in the last fiscal, in a blatant repeat of failure year after year, officials said on Monday.
An economist said it has become habitual for the ministries not to be serious about project execution, because there is no provision of punishments even if their performance is poor.
He argued that the government should set up an independent commission to assess the project implementation record of the project directors, agencies, divisions, and ministries.
The performance showed by the Internal Resources Division under the ministry of finance in executing its development projects was abysmal as it utilised only 15 per cent of its total fund allocations in fiscal year 2019-20, according to a report of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division.
The Division spent only Tk 346.40 million funds from its total outlay of Tk2.31 billion in the Annual Development Programme or ADP of FY2020.
The food ministry followed in the footsteps of the Internal Resources Division as it was ranked the second worst-performer in terms of ADP execution.
The food ministry spent 39 per cent of its total Tk 4.64 billion allocations between July 2019 and June 2020.
The ministries and agencies, which had failed to implement even half of their development work during FY2020, include Bangladesh Public Service Commission, the ministry of land, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the IMED, the agency tasked with tracking the performance of other government organs.
For example, the land ministry was placed on the low-performers' chart, as it spent Tk 3.62 billion funds, or 47 per cent of its total outlay.
In FY2020, all the government agencies and ministries executed only 80 per cent of the ADP, 15 percentage points lower than that of FY2019.
Even performance level of large ministries such as railway, primary and mass education, health, water resources, and science and technology was not up to the desired level in the just concluded fiscal, with their rates of execution reaching below 80 per cent.
Economist Dr Mirza Azizul Islam said that the government should immediately introduce the system of punishing the worst-performers while honouring the best ones.
The government should strengthen the IMED's legal capacity or establish an independent commission for evaluating the project implementation performance of the agencies and ministries, and reward them accordingly.
IMED secretary Abul Mansur Mohammad Faizullah said that they had recommended several guidelines for the ministries to expedite the project implementation, which were not followed properly.
A member of the Planning Commission said almost every year they sit with the ministries and agencies on a quarterly or half-yearly basis to streamline the project execution.
"But some inefficient project directors and agencies fail to improve their performance. These failures are repeated every year," he told the FE.