It is good to note that the government is likely to allocate some Tk 36.219 billion for seven ongoing mega projects in the budget for forthcoming financial year (FY) 2019-2020. Among the mega projects, the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project is likely to get the highest allocation—Tk 14,980.7 crore in the upcoming budget. The Metro Rail project is going to receive the second highest allocation and Padma Bridge is going to be the third in the list in terms of getting fund allocation.
While it cannot be denied that the present government has been relentlessly working to reshape the country’s transportation and power sector, it is also true that we have seen sheer apathy in implementation of most of the development schemes taken up by the government over the last ten years. Experts are of the opinion that due to frequent revision of the projects, the implementation costs continue to increase and as a result projects are not completed within the scheduled period.
Addressing the delay in implementation of a number of projects, the Parliamentary Committee on Government Assurances earlier asked all ministries to ensure attaining timely completion of all the projects with the fund sanctioned earlier. Also the parliamentary watchdog recommended the ministries to ensure constant vigilance over the ongoing mega projects.
Therefore, alongside increasing budgetary allocations, more efforts are needed from the part of the authorities concerned to bring greater pace to the implementation process of all the seven mega
projects.
No doubt timely implementation of all the mega projects will fuel the economic growth of the country and in order to do that concerted efforts from all the stakeholders is a must. Also the government must try to curb corruption, ease bureaucratic tangle, and ensure proper monitoring to attain successful completion of all development projects.