Staff Reporter:
Adviser to the interim government on the Ministries of Planning and Education Dr Wahiduddin Mahmud yesterday said that the main goals of the current government are to stopping wastage and mis-use of funds and curbing corruption in development schemes while it is also pursuing highly to contain the inflation rate.
“It’s very much urgent to us on how to ensure quality of development works rather than increasing the development budget size. Our main goals are to stop wastage and misuse of funds and also to curbing corruption. In doing so, if the expenditure remains low and the budget size is trimmed, then to me it’s not a disadvantage,” he said.
The Planning Adviser was replying to a volley of questions at the NEC conference room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area while briefing reporters about the first ECNEC meeting of the interim gov-ernment held yesterday at the Chief Adviser’s Office in Tejgaon.
Noting that the macroeconomic situation of the country is passing through a tough time, he hoped that the exchange rate would come to a stable condition while the internal resources mobilization would also get a momentum.
“For containing inflation, it’s necessary to conduct necessary exercise on where to contain the budget deficit. But, it’s very …very much necessary for us to contain the inflation,” he added.
Asked to what extent the current ADP size would be trimmed, the Adviser said it’s not possible right at this moment to project it as the government is still unclear about the possible sources of funding to meet the budgetary expenditure.
In this connection, he mentioned that they did not know even few days back that the World Bank would come up with fresh $1 billion funding if the almost died or ‘freezer’ projects are not processed further. The World Bank has proposed to provide the amount as budget support, he added.
Dr Mahmud said that all the development partners including the USAID are showing their keen interest to fund the government’s fresh development projects even they are saying that they have no reservation in continuing funding against the ongoing projects.
Regarding undertaking new development projects, he said the government would move cautiously and steadily through analyzing the possible sources of funding and after around five months, it would be possible to figure out the revised ADP size.
The Planning Adviser informed that they have almost amended the project formulation and implementa-tion process as the main weaknesses lie in project implementation process as most of the project directors over the years were politically motivated while they were also influential people.
Even the contractors tried to accomplish their task as per their wishes resulting in time overrun and cost overrun of projects leading to the misuse and wastage of fund.
“The project scrutiny and formulation process will almost remain the same, but we’ll try our best to min-imize the bureaucratic tangles and thus speedily process those for approval by ECNEC. Side by side we’ll attach some conditions before the executing agencies for implementing the projects successfully since implementation is the main thing,” he added.
The Adviser alleged that earlier in the past there were unnecessary interventions over the development projects while there was no accountability by the implementing agencies after the projects were approved at the ECNEC.
