The Annual Development Programme (ADP) is an organised list of projects in different sectors and allocations for them for a year as prepared in line with the government's development policies, programmes and investment plan. The ADP is prepared on the basis of the year's development budget approved by the parliament. The Planning Commission prepares the list of ADP projects of the government of Bangladesh in the light of basic objectives and goals of Five Year Plans. The draft is then placed before the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) for its approval. While preparing an ADP, fields and projects related to national economic development get more priority. Funds are allocated to implement the development projects included in the ADP.
Both internal (domestic) and external (donor) funds are used to finance projects. The availability of required funds often becomes a major consideration in preparing the ADP which has historically remained dependent on foreign aid.The practice of preparing an ADP within the framework of a Five-Year Plan and implementation thereof started with the First Five-Year Plan (1955-60) of the provincial government of East Pakistan. The ADP size in 1962-63 under the Second Five-Year Plan (1960-65) of the government of East Pakistan was Rs 1,358.33 million. The ADP for 1962-63 was divided into three parts, each contained projects of a group of sectors. The Part-I included projects of 10 sectors, namely, Water, Power, Health, Social Services, Agriculture, Housing and Settlement, Education and Training, Roads and Communications, Industries, and Manpower and Employment. Projects in the Part-II covered large industries such as the East Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation and the Pakistan Eastern Railways, and the Part-III comprised schemes transferred from the central government of Pakistan.
The government has a practice of revising the ADP almost every year and the main reason is the delay in disbursement of foreign aid in an environment of poor foreign aid utilization. Sometimes, the government changes the ADP by including new projects or excluding some listed projects in the mid-year. More often, delays in approval of projects or in creation of appropriate infrastructure facilities for them cause such revisions. Other causes for revision include procurement-related problems and the shortage of funds in Bangladesh taka's counterpart currency for the projects.
There are cases, when the ADPs are revised by increasing allocations in response to claims of the implementing ministries/agencies for additional allocations both in local and foreign currencies.
A part of such additional demand for funds is met from the head of unexpected expenditures in the annual budget.
An ADP, however, does not include all development projects of a year. Some projects are kept outside the ADP and are implemented with funds allocated from the revenue budget. Monitoring of the use of funds allocated under an ADP is done by a set of specific rules issued by the Ministry of Finance.
Latest ADP:
The government's spending on its annual development programme dropped 5 percentage points year-on-year during July-January of the current fiscal year mainly due to political unrest. Low utilisation of the fund earmarked for the Padma bridge project also caused a decline in such expenditure. In this backdrop, the Finance Division has advised the planning ministry to bring down the size of the ADP by 18 percent. Various ministries and divisions spent Tk 21,857 crore during the seven months, the amount being 33 percent of the total allocation at Tk 65,872 crore, according to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED). However, during the same period in the previous fiscal year, 38 percent of the total allocation was spent. Though ministries and divisions often blame their poor ADP performance on a slow disbursement of donors' funds, this time they are lagging much behind in using the government's money. During the period, they spent only 35 percent of the government's resources though the amount was 42 percent in the same period a year ago. On the other hand, utilisation of foreign funds was 31 percent, against 32 percent in the same period last year.
Latest ADP: The government's spending on its annual development programme dropped 5 percentage points year-on-year during July-January of the current fiscal year mainly due to political unrest. Low utilisation of the fund earmarked for the Padma bridge project also caused a decline in such expenditure. In this backdrop, the Finance Division has advised the planning ministry to bring down the size of the ADP by 18 percent. Various ministries and divisions spent Tk 21,857 crore during the seven months, the amount being 33 percent of the total allocation at Tk 65,872 crore, according to the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED). However, during the same period in the previous fiscal year, 38 percent of the total allocation was spent. Though ministries and divisions often blame their poor ADP performance on a slow disbursement of donors' funds, this time they are lagging much behind in using the government's money. During the period, they spent only 35 percent of the government's resources though the amount was 42 percent in the same period a year ago. On the other hand, utilisation of foreign funds was 31 percent, against 32 percent in the same period last year.