Ministries cannot half do their works in 11 months

Transport sector tooters over development-budget execution as at least four directly relevant ministries couldn't even half do their works in 11 months of the departing financial year, insiders say.

The Ministry of Railways, Bridges Division, Shipping Ministry, and Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry implemented less than 50 per cent of their works while Roads and Highways Division crossed half their stipulated execution targets, officials said Wednesday, while reports have it that many communications networks remained ramshackle or weak.

They said the interim government's strict monitoring on the unseated Sheikh Hasina government-taken ongoing and immediate-past mega-and large projects affected the implementation of the infrastructure-related development works.

This government has already announced that they would invest more money in social sector aiming to accelerate human resources development.

According to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), the Bridges Division and the Shipping Ministry had executed only 36 per cent of their works under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) during first 11 months of the year between July 2024 and May 2025.

The execution rates of the worst performers-Bridges Division and Shipping Ministry-were some 13-percentage-point lower than average execution rate of 49.08 per cent and 53.29 per cent of the top performer-Energy Division.

The Railways Ministry and the Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry are the two other worse performers as they have implemented only 40 per cent and 41 per cent of works in last 11 months of the FY2025.

Only the Roads and Highways Division has crossed half the stipulated mark in development works spending 52 per cent of the development funds during the July-May period, IMED data showed.

Meanwhile, the other big budget spenders, including Energy Division, Power Division, Local Government Division, Agriculture Ministry and Water Resources Ministry, have performed much better than the transport sector-related ministries.

A Railways Ministry official says they have gone for reviewing all the ongoing projects strictly and have not encouraged fresh projects without highest-priority ones after getting interim government's instructions.

"So, the project-implementing agency has become shaky, resulting in lower project-execution rate," he adds.

Echoing almost similar voices, a Roads and Highways Division official says they have also gone for scrutinizing almost all the projects undertaken by the Sheikh Hasina government, which has slowed down the implementation.

"Besides, we are also scrutinizing all the fresh projects of our agencies strictly before sending it to the Planning Commission for approval."

A Planning Commission official says they are getting less number of development project proposals over the months as the ministries and divisions are sending very minimum number of the schemes seeking approval.

"We have already scrapped some projects or components of the projects to check misuse of public funds. This initiative has already affected the overall project-execution rate," he explains.

Policy Exchange Bangladesh Chairman and economist Dr Masrur Reaz notes that public investment in the infrastructure, especially for the transport-sector development, directly facilitated private-sector investment.

"If the public investment in infrastructure is not furnished, Bangladesh's economy would not be boosted up," he says.

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