Budget monitoring meetings begin October 4

The Finance Ministry is set to begin a series of monitoring meetings to review the progress in implementing the national budget for 2009-10 financial year.
The first meeting will be with the energy division on October 4 as the government has prioritised the power and energy sector projects to meet the growing needs for electricity and gas.
The meetings will be continued till October 13 when the finance ministry will discuss and review the progress of the budget implementation with all ministries and divisions.
This is the first time that the ministry has taken such initiatives to oversee the implementation process in such a way.
The ministry will focus on development programmes at the meetings, as the experience in implementing such programmes was not satisfactory, an official said.
In the past a big portion of the allocated fund for development projects remained unused mainly because of the slow implementation process.
The current budget has allocated a big amount of Tk 30,500 crore for the development programmes.
Following the budget announcement in June, economists suggested the government to take special steps to ensure timely implementation of its development projects under the Annual Development Programme (ADP).
They also cautioned that the success of the fiscal targets could not be achieved without implementing the ADP.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith also admitted that the major challenge would be the implementation of the budget.
The minister in his budget speech, however, said that the government will initiate special measures to ensure timely implementation of the budget, especially the ADP.
The monitoring meetings are the major part of the initiatives. The finance ministry has prepared a priority list of over 200 programmes and advised the ministries concerned to submit quarterly reports on the progress of the programmes.
The ministry will also have a mid-term meeting in December when it will review the progress and suggest further measures to accelerate the process.