The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) has identified four factors behind the poor implementation of Bangladesh's Annual Development Programme (ADP).
The factors were introduction of a new public procurement policy, inability to undertake prior actions as agreed with the development partners, over-centralisation of the project planning and approval process coupled with confusion relating to the state of the sector-wide programme and state of uncertainty pervading the public administration in the backdrop of growing political confrontation.
"The realised size of ADP has stagnated in real term and has hovered between $ 3000 million and $ 2500 million (250 crore) during the last five/six years," the CPD said Thursday in its second interim report on Bangladesh's state of economy.
The largest ever ADP was implemented in fiscal year 2000 ($ 3033.5 million), followed by fiscal 2001 ($ 2850.0 million).
From all indications it seems that fiscal 2004 will not be able to break these records, the CPD said.
Until March 31 (nine months of the fiscal), only 45 per cent of this year's ADP has been implemented.
Explaining the factors, the CPD said the new public procurement policy has limited the scope for indulging in corruption while implementing foreign aided projects created some disincentive to spend.
The CPD further said the inability to undertake 'prior actions' as agreed with the development partners under the project documents seriously constrained the country's access to foreign aid in the pipeline.
The over-centralisation of the project planning also made the ADP implementation process more time-consuming.
Lastly, according to the CPD the state of uncertainty pervading the public administration in the backdrop of growing political confrontation encouraged many of the key persons in various government agencies to be indecisive or free sitters affecting the ADP implementation process.
It is also getting abundantly clear that without effective devolution of power and decentralisation of development administration through setting up of a strong upazila system, Bangladesh will not be able to effectively handle a larger ADP, the CPD said