Clipping the wings

-- The Bangladesh government wants to overhaul the country's Planning Commission and dismantle its monopoly in preparing development projects. The authorities contend that the rationale for the initiative is effective utilisation of public money.

Each ministry will now have to prepare projects by mobilising its own personnel. The ministries will also have to apportion their own resources. At a meeting of Planning Commission officials chaired by finance and planning minister Saifur Rahman, it was observed that the project selection process which the commission was following for years had been rendered redundant. This often resulted in priorities getting mixed up.

Officials, however, also blamed the lack of coordination among various government agencies, slow responses from ministries to project profiles and hurdles in procurement processes as reasons for the delay in implementing projects.