Govt aims to get out of ‘June syndrome’ of project implementation: PM's Adviser Titumir

The government wants to end hasty spending on development projects in June every year, which Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, finance and planning adviser to the prime minister, termed the "June syndrome".

“As soon as the month of June arrives, a major jump in expenditure is seen,” he told the media after a meeting of the panel on economic strategy formulation at the Planning Ministry.

To avoid this, the document includes provisions for year-round monitoring and evaluation of development project implementation.

Titumir said that past plans effectively became dead the day after they were adopted.

“That is to say, the strategies outlined in those plans, and the targets that were set, were never implemented,” he said, adding that the new planning document will clearly state both the vision and the method for achieving the targets.

He criticised the selection of projects on the basis of nepotism and patronage, noting that the current government is reviewing projects with high expenditure.

Titumir further explained that flaws in the past planning process led to low implementation rates, delayed appointments of project directors, and repeated time extensions.

“Even in some projects, revisions have been made up to the fourth time. In some places, even after approval in the ECNEC (Executive Committee of the National Economic Council), a project director was not appointed. For that very reason, we want to prepare a realistic and effective planning document. For this purpose, several issues have been included in the document in the form of separate chapters.”

“This is a major reform and undoubtedly a milestone in the history of Bangladesh’s plan formulation,” he said.

The proposed document will include recommendations on reforms needed to expedite implementation, the monitoring and evaluation process, and methods for ensuring inter-ministerial coordination.

In addition, the document emphasises securing the free flow of information.

“In the past, there was a culture of concealing information,” Titumir said, adding that making data available will allow university teachers, students, and researchers to analyse whether the actual results of the projects are consistent with the government’s claims.

He said they aim to reorganise the entire process anew, beginning from project selection, to ensure that projects align with the public mandate rather than being used for distributing patronage.

“The most important matter is that these projects are undertaken with the tax money of the public. The public wants to see where their tax money is being spent and wants to hold the government accountable. That is why we want to ensure the free flow of information so that people can make decisions in their own way.”

He concluded that the Planning Commission and the Planning Ministry were rendered virtually powerless in the past, remarking that the main task of the ministry had dwindled to quickly approving projects below Tk 50 crore.