Disciplining ADP implementation

What eventually happens is that the last quarter of a financial year, coinciding with the rainy season, as though in a conspiracy of circumstances created by indolence, deliberate inefficiency and a huge appetite for corruption, is jammed with project implementation hyperactivity. Yearly allocations are sought to be utilised in a matter of few months only. Under-implementation and poor quality development work are the results.

Finding a scapegoat has been a necessary part of ADB evaluations. Sometimes the blame has been laid at the doorsteps of development partners for not disbursing funds in good time and on the finance ministry for not timely releasing funds and at other times the ministries themselves have been faulted for a gross under-utilisation of their allocations. In truth, the ministries have had little by way of an implementation machinery.

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Presumably, at the end of a long road of experimentation with ADP implementation strategies we now have a set of measures enunciated by finance minister M Saifur Rahman for the ministries to utilise the project development funds within a given timeframe.

No fund for development projects will be released after the month of April beginning with the 2005-2006 fiscal. The ministries will have to place their respective requirements with the finance and planning ministry by that cut-off date. The finance minister has asserted that the ministries are provided with 75 percent of their allocations at the beginning of the year, so that they should be able to indicate the remainder of their requirement by April. One of the principal reasons for delay in the ADB implementation is ascribed to following the rules of procurement which, of course, cannot be compromised, so that efficient time management from the beginning of the year is crucial.

The most radical sounds to be the minister's warning that if any ministry should fail to spend its allocation on schedule, the unutilised funds will be reallocated to a better performing ministry. This is a potentially good disciplining approach which must be fully effective, though; otherwise, it risks distorting the order of development priorities straddling the ministries as originally envisaged in the ADB formulations. The decision to take action against officials not complying with suggestions of the monthly monitoring meetings of the ministries finds a responsive chord in us.

Needless to say, the new measures would be as good as their implementation.