Every year's budget speech highlights certain priority areas. Yet we are dismayed to see that over the last six years, prioritised areas have remained largely unimplemented. One of these has been Public-Private Partnership, or PPP, which has only been talked about. The national coal policy has not been finalised over the last six years; law for financial reporting council has not been enacted despite being okayed by the cabinet a year ago. Indeed, going by what has been reported in a leading Bangla daily on May 30, many such other sectors that were supposed to be thrust areas for government action have not been addressed.

The snail's pace work on developing Dhaka's infrastructure including construction of roads, upgrading railway, the various flyovers under various stages of construction, drainage system – all remain in various stages of limbo. While these are the most talked about projects that have got stuck in bureaucratic delays, there are other ventures that have never seen the light of day. For instance, the metro rail project for which international financing has been available for some time now and yet no headway has been made since 2009. None of the special economic zones for foreign investment have been finalised or inaugurated. This year, authorities have finally taken note of the fact that these priority areas have remained unimplemented. The next logical step would be to remove the bottlenecks that perpetuate inaction so that we do not have to revisit another year spent in limbo on projects that can help the country's rapid development.