Poor utilisation of aid money

DELAYS in project implementation have resulted in the swelling up of unutilized foreign development assistance in the pipeline. Thanks to the present rate of annual utilization at a mere18 per cent that a colossal sum of aid money amounting US$19.30 billion is lying idle. This is indeed unfortunate for an economy, 35 per cent of whose allocations for Annual Development Programme (ADP), especially for infrastructure development, still comes from external assistance.

The factors coming in the way of timely implementation of development projects, as identified by the Economic Relations Division (ERD), include, inter alia, procrastination in the preparation as well as approval of the project proposals and delay in issuing work orders following a prolonged process of tenders to purchase materials and so on. Delays are also made at the development partners' end in disbursing project funds. Interestingly, these factors are too familiar and persistent to be discovered anew. They are purely bureaucratic in origin and until and unless the political leadership at the helm is not exerting its will to break the vicious circle and infuse dynamism in the process of project implementation by way of strong oversight from the inception till completion, things will hardly improve.

The argument of gradually reducing our dependency on foreign assistance is unassailable. Even so, it cannot be an excuse for lack of performance so far as implementation of foreign-aided development projects is concerned. The government must simplify procedures and free the project implementation process of bureaucratic red-tape to ensure timely and full utilization of foreign development assistance.