Faruque Ahmed
Business interest must be kept out of politics. Otherwise public interest may lose ground to dirty business interest at the nation’s cost. “A cat can’t be the least trusted guard to a store house of dried fish.” This is what Suranjit Sengunpta had once said about businessmen turned politicians.
Moreover when business interest plus party politics becomes guiding principles of government budgetary allocations, the worst may come at the end. The National Economic Council (NEC) approved the Revised Annual Development Programme (RADP) on April 3 in a highly charged political environment prompting the finance minister to succumb to the newly appointed minister of planning’s additional demand for funds.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith wanted to bring down the size of the revised ADP to Tk 55,000 crore from the original size at Tk 65,870 crore. But Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, who is a businessman, presented an additional demand of Tk 8,777 crore for different ministries suggesting the allocations are highly essential to their development projects.
Cost overrun
The basis of the demand is the high implementation cost of the projects and he forced the finance minister to agree to the size of the revised ADP at Tk 60,000 crore despite his strong objections about the justification of additional fund and the quality of the expenditures.
Finance Minister said his job is to tailor the size of the budget – both the revenue annd the development budget – keeping eyes on the size of the revenue collection and othher sources of fund from home and donors’ assistance. He said the revenue shortfall has already been projected at Tk 11,000 crore this year and any additional fund to the revised ADP must be arranged with additional borrowing from banks.
He further said, during the eight months the ministries were able to spend Tk 25,218 crore of the ADP which is only 38 percent of the allocated fund. More allocations may therefore end up in waste and misuse as the government implementation capacity is critically limited to handle more funds in the next four months time. The present ADP has been based on Tk 25,000 bank borrowing which is almost 40 percent of the annual development programme and the government will have to borrow at least Tk 5,000 crore more from banks to raise it to Tk 31,000 crore; which is roughly equivalent to 50 percent of the revised ADP.
Economists suggest development funding from public borrowing anticipating that its financial and economic rate of returns will be more over time in terms of job creation and income generation than the real cost of borrowing. But question arises if the money borrowed is used in reckless expenditure dominated by political goals and marred with high level of corruption, irregularities and questionable expenses, such borrowing is critically harmful to add to the repayment load on the economy and to the nation.
More fund allocation questioned
Question arises what were the compulsions to allocate more funds to some development ministries at a time when allegations of corruption and misuse of budgetary fund for political purposes galore at all levels. There is hardly any transparency and accountability in the use of fund in LGRD ministry, in the ministries of education, health, communication, water resource management, social safety net and such other heads of expenditures.
Most money now finds way to political use and there is a common perception at work that government budget has become closely integrated with political goals and mobilization of party machinery at the field level. Party leaders and workers are beneficiaries of the budget and ministers and senior functionaries of the government are reportedly taking home a lion share of the development expenditure under their control by way of manifold manipulations and mischief. Reports said that the size of the revised ADP soared because of high cost of existing projects but while it is true that cost of construction materials have increased, the question is whether or not the revised expenditure has any relation with the real cost escalation in the ground. It is reportedly estimated at many times higher to generate additional fund to misuse for political purposes. The quarrel between Finance Minister AMA Muhith and Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal was actually a case of public disappointment prior to the revised ADP meetings and during the internal budgetary exercises.
As the Finance Minister was not agreeing to the demand for additional fund of the planning minister who is rather a minister but was a businessmen with questionable integrity, because of his involvement of the 2010 stock market scam and had launched a slanderous campaign against the finance minister at the time.
Muhith who had protected the planning minister from possible prosecution for his involvement in the stock market scam based on a government probe report, now came under his sharp attack as a “good for nothing” minister.
Scandalous verbosity
The Planning Minister questioned the merits and achievement of the Finance Minister and also blamed him for presenting lengthy but hollow budget speeches. He further said, the finance minister crashed out of his long budget speeches on the floor and what he say over several hours in the budget speech he can do it in a 15-minute speech.
It is true that the Finance Minister speaks much and at times irrelevant, but the new planning minister must realized that there is not a second Mr AMA Muhith in the cabinet by virtue of his long public service and the capacity to run the administration of a super ministry like finance.
The planning minister could show the minimum respect as what Muhith said in his reaction demanding certain level of political decorum. Mustafa Kamal may not become a minister again but should have the minimum decency to treat an octogenarian minister like Muhith and should realize that even if he himself lives for another 50 years he won’t be able to achieve anything like half of that of Muhith. Any sensible person would disapprove planning minister’s arrogance and dismiss his comments as gibberish.
However, senior politicians and members of the civil society have said that it is not acceptable from a halfwit businessman of doubtful integrity losing his balance after becoming a minister to treat a nationally respected person with such disdain.
Source: Weekly Holiday
