Half-yearly ADP progress slips amid corona

Implementation of the government’s development budget hit the five-year low at 23.89 percent in the first half of FY21 mainly due to gloomy local resources utilization amid the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

During July-December period one year ago, overall ADP implementation performance was recorded at 26.59 percent, suggest the Implementation monitoring & evaluation division (IMED) data.

Even the volume of expenditure slipped year-on-year by Tk 59.3 billion or 10.37 percent to Tk 512.66 billion in the first six months from Tk 571.96 billion in the period of FY20 that faced no such crisis.

“Our overall half-yearly ADP performance is good. But poor performance of international resources division (IRD) has skewed the overall ADP performance,” IMED Secretary Pradip Ranjan Chakraborty said.

He explained that IRD, also known as National Board of Revenue (NBR), could manage to accomplish only 1.75 percent ADP in six months as it had to face tender-related problems.

Pradip said he has already talked to the NBR about the issue and the tax administrator has assured IMED that they would be able to post better performance in the second half.

The boss of the project watchdog also informed that IMED is in talks with seven or eight ADP executing agencies, which posted below 10 percent performance in H1, to stoke ADP implementation performance.

The government planned to spend Tk 2146.11 billion on development in the current fiscal year, including Tk 94.66 billion by autonomous public corporations, to bring back normalcy in economic activities dented by the global pandemic.

For executing the plan, Tk 1,346.43 has been estimated to be spent from local resources, while Tk 705.02 billion official development assistance (ODA) is expected to come from the development partners.

Local resources utilization under ADP posted second-worst performance of 24.02 percent in five years after FY17 that saw 23.42 percent spending from local money in the first six months. In FY20, it was much higher at 29.08 percent, latest IMED data showed.

Despite an increased local resource allocation in FY21, implementing agencies managed to spend Tk 323.45 billion in July-December period, down from Tk 380.76 billion expenditure made a year earlier.

ADP spending from project Assistance (PA), on the other hand, improved in a very thin margin but lacked the bullish trend seen in FY18 and FY19.

Project aid utilization modestly rose to Tk 175.63 billion or 24.91 percent, which was Tk 175.26 billion or 24.41 in the same period one year ago.

In FY18 and FY19, the performance of this segment rose to 32.97 per cent and 29.72 per cent respectively with higher expenditure volumes.

In December, all the performance showed a declining trend to post an overall 5.96 percent ADP performance with Tk 127.94 billion aggregate monthly spendings, down from Tk 7.35 percent or Tk 158.10 billion spendings one year ago.

Most economic activities, including government’s development work, almost put to a halt with the imposition of a two-month lockdown from late March last year to rein in the spread of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, top 15 ministries or divisions that fetched 81.63 percent ADP money posted average 24.89 percent ADP implementation performance in the first half with power division coming top with 34.68 percent performance.

Industries ministry managed to post 28.46 percent performance, primary and mass education ministry 27.51 percent, water resources ministry 27.19 percent, PMO 27.10 percent, railways ministry 25.34 percent, secondary and higher education division 25.22 percent, science and technology ministry 22.68 percent and bridges division 19.80 percent.