STAR BUSINESS REPORT

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 in Dhaka yesterday.

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 based on 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 cases, 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.