Ministers barred from unilaterally adopting projects

The interim government has amended a rule, preventing ministers and state ministers from taking unilateral decisions on adopting projects under their jurisdictions that are worth Tk50 crore or more.

A ministry and its subsidiaries will have to send the proposal first to Planning Commission for review. After the Commission’s greenlight, the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (ECNEC) will give the final approval.

However, the ministry can take unilateral decisions regarding projects that cost less than Tk50 crore and are planned by its constituent organisations.

The move is aimed at curbing ministerial corruption, misuse of public funds, and ensuring that the projects do not end up harming the people or the state.

To this end, on 12 January, the National Economic Council, led by Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus, amended Section 7 of “Guideline for Development Project Preparation, Processing, Approval and Revision.”

A ministry can have a number of autonomous bodies, semi-autonomous organisations, corporations or state company that adopt and implement projects with their own earnings.

For example, the Power and Energy Ministry has REB, DPDC, DESCO, PDB and other autonomous bodies which prepare, implement and fund their own projects with approval from their concerned ministers or state ministers.

These projects are not reviewed or observed by anyone outside the concerned ministry, making these hotspots for corruption. These projects are not included in the government’s Annual Development Programme (ADP) and thus are not reviewed by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED).

Officials at the ministries, autonomous bodies and corporations can make lofty cost assessments, unnecessarily delay implementation or even revise up project cost midway, making them attractive for booking unlawful money.