Attaining good governance

Accountability is a vast subject. It may, therefore, be appropriate here to discuss in brief only the most important elements, in the following paragraphs.

Increasing Capacity of Constitutional and Statutory Oversight Bodies: Though in a democratic system parliamentary accountability is a basic need it has not worked well in Bangladesh so far because of too much power for executive, incomplete adjustment from a presidential to a parliamentary system and inadequate debate (because of peculiar behaviour of major political parties) on policy and legislation in parliament. Though the standing committees are supposed to perform many of the important parliamentary oversight and legislative functions they have proved to be ineffective.

As accountability is vital for good governance all concerned should make special effort to increase its effectiveness and raise the status of parliament in national life. It may be worthwhile if the government considers the following suggestions: Adequate office and research facilities to MPs; Strengthening the system of standing committees; Parliamentary approval for key appointments (both judicial and executive positions); Permanent parliamentary support and oversight agencies; and Establishing an Ombudsman's office.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG): The chief responsibility for financial monitoring lies with the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General in Bangladesh. This office is responsible for verifying ex-post that all public expenditures conform to administrative, legal and legislative requirements. Although he is appointed by the government the constitution provides for its independence.

The reports of the CAG do not reflect proper ex-post checks over spending agencies perhaps due to (a) weak staff skills, (b) outmoded concepts and procedures, (c) inadequate coverage of reports, (d) dual responsibility of accounting and auditing, (e) delay in issuing reports, (f) lack of comprehensiveness and poor quality of reports, (g) inadequate attention to follow-up action, (h) lack of adequate number of professionally qualified staff. To alleviate these problems the CAG, Planning Implementation Units and implementing agencies may be allowed to (i) recruit directly audit firms on the basis of market rates of remuneration, (ii) strengthen the training programmes (both domestic and foreign), (iii) separate audit and accounting functions, (iv) initiate action for moving toward output-oriented accountability, (v) improve the quality of external audits of SOEs and (vi) prepare a model audit scope using guidelines given by International Auditing Standards Board.

Centralization of Government Budget: The budget is presented in two parts, the revenue budget and the development budget. The revenue budget covers collation and examination of the ministerial budget submissions, summarisation and passage through the parliament to its final publication. Development budget converts the annual development programme prepared by the Planning Commission. Among the existing weaknesses of the budget system are: Budget preparation procedures are not easily accessible and contain too many documents; Budget calendars are too long and time for analysis too short; Lacks a medium-term expenditure and revenue frameworks Very little or no special pre-service training for qualification of budget staff; and the Revenue and Development budgets, prepared separately, are exogenously driven. Revenue budget is largely driven by historical factors and the development budget is influenced by the availability of donor funding and increasingly by likely savings after meeting the recurring expenditure under the revenue budget. This results in unpredictability of funds: Neither the minister nor the secretary is fully involved in the preparatory stages of the budget; and there is little attempt made to identify ministerial objectives and to provide funds on that basis.

Monitoring and Evaluating Development Projects: The implementation, monitoring and evaluation division (IMED) is responsible for all routine monitoring of projects and for preparing quarterly and annual overviews of expenditures and the attainment of physical benchmarks. It also carries out inspections to verify information provided by the implementing agencies. Its various weaknesses are, very briefly, discussed below: Because of the narrowness of its mandate it cannot monitor the overall effectiveness of public spending. There are excessive expenditure targets without due consideration to physical achievements. It does not evaluate projects systematically.

Enhancement of Transparency: Transparency and openness are regarded as foundations of accountability in governments. The wide dissemination of information on government policies provides for public debate. It also helps to improve policy design, facilitates acceptance and ensures effective implementation. In Bangladesh very large number of activities remain outside the public purview. Bureaucrats are obsessed with secrecy and have deep misgivings about freely providing any information. Three major reasons can be identified for this attitude: (a) lack of professional knowledge of civil servants; (b) existence of specific laws and rules which explicitly make it a criminal offence for civil servants to disclose various kinds of information without authorisation (Official Secret Act, 1923) and (c) the bureaucrats believe that revealing too much information undermines the trust and confidence between the civil servants and their political masters.

Many countries such as USA, New Zealand etc now recognise that secrecy reduces efficiency and the quality of decision making and most importantly, it compromises democracy. In view of the trend for openness the government may consider practicing the following: announcing a public policy on transparency; establishing a task force for public sector transparency; publishing the earnings and tax payments of all elected officials as reported in the tax returns; publishing a list of bank defaulters; enhancing dissemination of information and reports.

Fighting Corruption: Corruption thrives in Bangladesh mainly because (i) there is discretion and monopoly, (ii) weak accountability and (iii) poor pay of public servants. Apart from these, other important causes are: (a) nature of regulatory environment, (b) lack of transparency in government, (c) influence of powerful business interests, (d) weakness in legal framework and (e) self-sustaining cycle of corruption.

Bureaucratic corruption cannot exist in isolation. In fact it is a reflection of prevailing behavioural patterns and cultural mores in society. It is sustained only by the participation of many people in the private sector and the business community. Political leaders are also to blame. Political corruption is the source of funding for political parties which have failed to develop broad-based system of eliciting contribution.

Successive governments have condemned corruption and taken isolated punitive actions, but they have failed to tackle the underlying structural issues. The tendency to view corruption as a personal misdeed has led to an excessive reliance on punishment. This may have some deterrent effect, but has not addressed the root of the problem.

In Bangladesh powerful politicians and bureaucrats are never prosecuted while in office. Though there is an Anti Corruption Bureau it is largely ineffective. A systematic effort to attack the source is urgently needed. Generally speaking, we may get good result in curbing corruption among public servants if the scope for graft raising can be reduced, level of ethical standards can be raised through espirit de corps based on service practice and increasing compensation. Good governance will remain an ever elusive dream if the corruption among public servants cannot be reduced drastically.

ABMS Zahur is a retired Joint Secretary.