B'desh raises 2007-08 devp spending by 23 pc

Dhaka, June 3: Bangladesh has unveiled its annual development programme (ADP) for the 2007-08 fiscal year, raising funding by nearly 23 per cent to 265 billion taka.

The National Economic Council (NEC) yesterday approved the ADP, giving top priority to education and the development of power generation, a government statement said.

Allocations for the current fiscal year, which runs from July to June, were originally 5 billion taka higher than last year's ADP of 260 billion taka. But the 2006-07 ADP was later cut to 216 billion taka due to lack of funding.

Only 44 per cent of the current ADP was implemented during July-April period, compared with 49 per cent during the same period in the previous fiscal year.

Officials said that was partly because of the country's political turmoil in the latter half of 2006-07, which also hindered industrial and infrastructural development.

Bangladesh is now being run by an army-backed interim government, which has attached top priority to tackling long-running power shortages that hurt industrial and agriculture production.

''Power generation as a single sector received the highest priority,'' Fazle Rabbi, spokesman of finance and planning ministry, told Reuters today.

Chaired by Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, the NEC adopted 1,333 development projects for the year 2007-08, which economists termed ''ambitious''.

Just over half the total expenditure envisaged in the ADP would come from internal revenue sources, with the rest coming from international development partners including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the government statement said.

Bangladesh expects to receive more than 21 billion taka from the World Bank's Power Sector Development Credit (PSDC) scheme, officials said.

Reuters>