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Some suggestions regarding ADP 2004-05

20 May 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Aminul Mohaimen, Dhanmondi, Dhaka
20 May 2004, 18:00 PM
The Annual Development Plan for the fiscal year 2004-05 is going to be finalised within a month. As majority of the development activities of the country is still performed by the government, the fate of almost every citizen, especially the vast majority living in the villages, still depends on how and where the money is spent. However, due to obscurity in some areas of the ADP and lack of access of the ordinary citizens to this document, the taxpayers remain in dark about the distribution of our development money.

The greatest obscurity in the way ADP is published is that there is no regional analysis of the allocation or projects. Probably, no single person or agency of the government knows how much money is going to be spent and which projects are going to be implemented in a region during a certain fiscal year. It creates a risk of uneven development in various locations of the country. There are some regions where people live in perennial poverty. In spite of considerable amount of growth in our economy in the last three decades, people of those areas are facing recurring monga. One of the main reasons of perpetual poverty in the northern region of the country is inadequate development activities by government. However, there is no way to ascertain it because the ADP or other government document does not say anything about the regional distribution of the development fund.

Another obscurity of the ADP is the way it is categorised. The ADP is presented according to the economic sectors. Projects of a single ministry can fall in different economic sectors and projects of an economic sector can belong to different ministries.

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The ADP does not contain any ministry wise analysis of the plan. It is very difficult for someone to identify which projects belong to a particular ministry.

Although the Ministry of Planning has made the focal point for implementing e-governance in Bangladesh, it does not publish the ADP in the Internet. I think the best way to ensure the minimum level of transparency in managing public money is to allow the taxpayers to view their development plans in the Internet.

I request the government to take necessary steps for removing the obscurities of the ADP and allowing the common men access to it. It can be done by including a column in the Annual Development Plan indicating the districts where the project will operate in the fiscal year, providing a regional summary of the allocation, presenting it according to the ministries as well as economic sectors and publishing it in the Internet.