Development budget to be scaled down

The revised development budget for fiscal 2015-16 is likely to be Tk 90,000 crore, which is about 7 percent less than the original outlay.

But it is 20 percent higher than a year earlier, despite the low implementation in the first eight months of the year.

Between July last year and March this year, the ministries and divisions spent only Tk 33,209 crore of the Tk 97,000 crore annual development programme budget -- the lowest in at least five years.

Subsequently, at a meeting on Tuesday with Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in the chair, it was decided that a revised ADP budget of Tk 88,000 crore will be placed before the National Economic Council, said a planning ministry official.

As it tends to happen, the prime minister will add another Tk 2,000 crore, so the revised ADP budget for this fiscal year will be Tk 90,000 crore in the end.

But the various ministries present at the meeting demanded an additional allocation of Tk 10,000 crore.

In response, the finance ministry said it is ready to allocate funds as per demand, but what is the point of increasing the allocation on paper if the ministries cannot spend the amount, according to the official.

In the next fiscal year, their allocation will be increased if they can bring in transformative projects such as the Padma bridge and the Matarbari deep-sea port, he said quoting the finance ministry.

Every year, during the preparation of the revised ADP, the Finance Division and the different ministries and divisions invariably engage in a scuffle over the allocation. Eventually, they cannot implement their whole allocation.

For instance, in fiscal 2014-15, the ADP was originally set at Tk 80,315 crore, which was later revised down to Tk 75,000 crore.

In the end, only Tk 68,532 crore was spent, according to statistics from the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division. But, as per the Finance Division, the actual spending was Tk 59,570 crore.

In the revised budget for this year, the government's own fund is likely to be cut by 3 percent to Tk 60,840 crore, and the foreign fund by 16 percent to Tk 29,160 crore.

Meanwhile, a Finance Division official quoting the finance minister said the government plans to prepare a separate budget for mega projects next year.

The ADP budget for the next fiscal year is likely to be around Tk 113,000 crore, he added.