Expediting project implementation

It is indeed a cheerful piece of information that the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have agreed at a tripartite portfolio review meeting on Thursday to take up an action plan to accelerate the implementation of ADB-assisted projects in 2021-2022. The portfolio review has been taken to promote faster socio-economic recovery and bring normalcy to the economy in general.  

Against the backdrop of losses and sufferings experienced by all the economic sectors in the last two years, we believe it’s a timely and most needed initiative. It is especially important in the context of Bangladesh where projects often get delayed for months and even years for no plausible reasons. On this happy occasion, the Director General for ADB’s South Asia Department in his opening remarks appreciated policies and programmes aimed at expediting socio-economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. He also urged the government to build a stronger project pipeline, ensure higher project readiness and improved implementation discipline for better performance. Such an action plan would help boost the ongoing socio-economic recovery process in Bangladesh. There is no denying that ADB has a long history of partnering with Bangladesh as a trusted friend in our socio-economic development.     

We believe the question of expediting projects has come up as a natural sequel of events. Records tell us that important development projects, mega or normal sized, often get delayed for many reasons in Bangladesh. Some of the delays are acceptable as these are caused by genuine, unforeseen turn of events, such as, natural calamity, pandemic, accident, shortage of funds etc. But, on other occasions, poor performance by the personnel involved in the project, and blatant corruption of the officials result in the closure of the project halfway to completion. Delays, intentional slowing down, or total standstill situation in the project completion leads to cost escalation, suffering of the beneficiaries and non-payment of salary or wages to workers. There are stories of projects in limbo for years, even decades, in this country, resulting from corruption of the project officials and local political elements.              

 The Country Director of ADB rightly said that the enhanced focus for expediting project implementation reflects ADB’s reoriented programme priorities for accelerating the ongoing socio-economic recovery process in Bangladesh. In this regard the organization gives emphasis on starting a system for a better, faster and compliant procurement of goods and services to increase contract award and fund disbursement. It is encouraging to note that the bank is appreciative of Bangladesh’s commitment to creating jobs and increasing public investment, to tackle the adverse impact of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The questions of specific actions for slow-moving projects, utilization of the project money expeditiously and ensuring quality of implementation work through taking the advantage of technologies have been key points of discussion.

ADB’s current sovereign portfolio has 52 projects worth $12.03 billion. ADB operates in Bangladesh in six sectors—energy; transport; water and urban/municipal infrastructure and services; education; finance; and agriculture, natural resources, and rural development. The cumulative lending to Bangladesh stands at over $40 billion in loans and grants, including co-financing.

This may be mentioned here that the Asian Development Bank in July this year has approved a loan package of $940 million for the Government of Bangladesh to purchase safe and effective vaccines against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). And in the same month it has approved a $250 million policy-based loan to the Government of Bangladesh to help finance reforms aimed at improving the inclusiveness and responsiveness of the country’s social development and resilience programme.  Besides, financial assistance has been approved for scaling up the East Asian-Australasian Flyway initiative; building coastal resilience through nature-based and integrated solutions; strengthening social resilience programme, and improving infrastructure and state-owned enterprise governance for sustainable investment and debt management.   

The government is handling a number of projects at the moment including a couple of mega-projects worth billions of dollars. The dateline of some of them is fast approaching therefore the project directors will have to follow the recently taken GOB-ADB guidelines and strive for their timely completion. Once commissioned, these projects will bring economic benefit for the people in general.