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Govt moves to rein in spending to enforce budgetary discipline
S M Jahangir
3/3/2005
The government has asked various ministries and departments not to overshoot their respective budgetary allocations to lessen stress on its limited resources, official sources said.
"We have initiated a move to cut down additional expenditures due to the government's prevailing resource constraints," a senior finance ministry official said.
The ministry has already advised the government agencies concerned to cease incorporating fresh projects in their annual development programme (ADP), said the official.
Such advice came against the backdrop of a growing number of extra-budgetary funding proposals to the finance ministry by various ministries and departments, the officials said.
At this time of the year, many government agencies seek additional funds for freshly-drawn development schemes and also for meeting extra recurring expenditures beyond the original budgetary allocation, which the government has to meet at times, they said.
"Now, the government finds itself in a difficult situation to allocate such additional funds mainly because of its limited resources," said an official of the Expenditure Control wing of the ministry.
Taking the resources problem into account, the wing has already rejected a good number of new expenditure proposals by various ministries and departments, the official said.
Besides, it also insisted that the government agencies should acquire reconditioned or second-hand cars/vehicles instead of brand new ones for their use to help cut the state expenditure, he added.
In addition to such expenditure cuts, the government has also taken some cautious move toward recruitment of fresh manpower, another official said.
"Baring some exceptional cases, the government is now reluctant to recruit new manpower," the official said.
Ministry officials said the government has taken such austerity policy in view of its current resource limitation caused mainly by a significant fall in its revenue collection.
The government's overall revenue collection is reported to have fallen short of target by nearly Tk 35 billion in the July-January period of the 2004-05 fiscal.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) realised revenues worth around Tk 152.48 billion during the first seven months of the current fiscal as against the target of about Tk 187.77 billion.
It, however, achieved a 47 per cent of the total revenue collection target set earlier by the government at Tk 321.90 billion for the 2004-05 fiscal.
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