Eating the humble pie on ADP

It defies comprehension how the government which has implemented only 36 percent of the original ADP in eight months is going to complete the development cycle, assuming that Tk 1,366cr reduction is a realistic adjustment, in just about four months left to the fiscal! Isn't it a hoax? The implementation status this year into its ninth month is the bleakest to-date. ADP, for the most part, has remained an exercise in pure speculation. Stuffed with poorly designed and sited projects adopted more on political and constituency nurturing considerations than on sound economic assumptions, an ADP is like cutting your coat according to other's cloth -- that is not even in hand.

Just sample the naivete of child dreaming: despite a pragmatic forecast of how much project aid could be garnered for ADP 2003-04, some government high-ups deliberately meddled in making sure the project aid component of the ADP were got up to 59 percent. Now, the ADP implementation shortfall is being blamed out, not on an unrealistic expectation of project or programme aid inflows, nor even on poor implementation capacity, but squarely on poor disbursement of foreign aid. That the development partners are insistent on sector-wide reform or integrated approach both in respect of projects and programmes including governance, private sector participation, transparency in tendering and purchase processes is a known assumption on which we should have formulated our ADP in the first place. Why these heroics of a martyr complex now of shouting from the house-top that 'foreign aid eluded us through 'new conditionalities', but in local resource utilisation, (which was the only thing left for us to employ), we have created a new record.' Self-reliance in whichever way it comes may be welcomed, but it should not be used to skirt inefficiency. In real terms, this hardly helped the foreign-aided projects to fructify.

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Actually, we should go for a small, compact portfolio of quality projects focused on infrastructure and human resource development that are capable of being implemented on time and with a blend of both local resource and friendly international assistance. Let parties in power not play around with ADPs as some propaganda documents.