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Supplementary Budget

No scrutiny, passage today

Staff Correspondent
The parliament is set to pass the supplementary budget of the current fiscal year today, without proper examination of the reasons for over Tk 7,779 crore excess spending by 31 ministries and divisions.
The House cannot scrutinise the excess expenditure because its Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is indifferent to its functions prescribed in the Rules of Procedure of Jatiya Sangsad, said a senior official of the parliament secretariat.
The rules say, if any money has been spent on any service during a financial year in excess of the amount granted by the House for that purpose, the Public Accounts Committee will examine with reference to the facts of each case the circumstances leading to such an excess, and make such recommendation as it may deem fit.
Like previous years, PAC this time also did not move to examine the reasons for the excess expenditure.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Thursday placed the supplementary budget in the parliament along with the budget for the next fiscal year.
The revised budget shows 31 ministries and divisions spent more than the parliament had allocated forthem.
Contacted by The Daily Star yesterday Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, chief of PAC, said the supplementary budget should be sent to the parliamentary standing committee on the finance ministry for scrutiny.
"But in our country, that practice is not followed. It should be followed," he
added.
When his attention was drawn to the Rules of Procedure, the PAC chief said his committee can scrutinise the government expenditure on receiving audit reports prepared by the comptroller and auditor general.
Meanwhile, participating in the discussion on the supplementary budget that began yesterday, ruling coalition lawmakers spent much of the time criticising the main opposition BNP for enforcing a hartal to realise its demand for continuing the caretaker governmentsystem.
They urged BNP to join the House and place its proposals about the form of the caretaker government it wants to have.
Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain opened the discussion on the supplementary budget, justifying the additional expenditure of the ministries and divisions.
Interestingly, chief of PAC Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir also appreciated the government performance in the outgoing fiscal, and defended the additional expenditure.
ABM Golam Mostafa, chief of the parliamentary standing committee on public undertakings,
seemed to have forgotten that the excess money had already been spent and a post facto approval is now being sought from the House.
He surprisingly suggested that the excess money should be spent properly for specified purposes.
Suranjit Sengupta, chief of the parliamentary standing committee on law justice and parliamentary affairs ministry, lauded the ministries and divisions that were able to spend more money than the parliament had allocated for them.
He sought to know the names of 26 ministries and divisions which failed to spend the allocated money amounting to over Tk 9,000 crore.
"We don't want to condemn their failure to spend the allocated money. We just want to know their names," Suranjit said.
He pointed out that nothing was mentioned in the supplementary budget about the ministries' failure to spend allocated money.
Suranjit also blasted the main opposition for enforcing the hartal instead of joining the House.