The government's failure to implement development projects on time increases project costs up to about 1,000 percent.

Big portions of Annual Development Programme (ADP) allocations are also left unutilised at the end of every fiscal year, due to the delays.

In the last fiscal year 173 projects were completed, but not before the deadlines for 116 of those had been extended by 78 percent on an average. The delays shot up the costs of 59 projects by 34 percent on an average.

The Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation Division (IMED) in September last

year prepared a detailed evaluation report on 178 projects completed in fiscal year 2006-07. It showed that the deadlines for the projects were extended by 466 percent on an average which shot the actual costs up by 1 to 872 percent.

A Daily Star reviewofADPs of the last 10 fiscal years revealed that even after revision of the original ADPs, 10 to 20 percent of the revised ADPs remained unimplemented every year.

The current fiscal year's original ADP size was Tk 30,500 crore, which was 32 percent larger than last year's. But keeping with tradition it was cut to Tk 28,500 crore through a revision.

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