Dhaka: The National Economic Council (NEC) is to approve the Revised Annual Development Programme (RADP) for the current fiscal year (FY18) tomorrow with a proposal for making a 3.23 per cent cut from the original ADP size.

‘The NEC meeting will be held tomorrow and it will be proposed before the meeting to make a Taka 4,950.25 crore cut from the original ADP of Taka 1,53,331.25 crore,’ said a senior Planning Commission official.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will preside over the meeting at the NEC conference room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla nagar area.

The official said the NEC earlier approved a Taka 1,53,331.25 crore ADP for the current fiscal year with Taka 96,331.25 crore coming from the domestic resources while Taka 57,000 crore from the foreign resources.

Considering Taka 4,950.00 crore cut from the foreign resources portion, the revised ADP size would be proposed at Taka 1,48,381 crore, said the Planning Commission official.

Apart from this, the portion from the organization’s own fund in the RADP is also likely to see a Taka 1,540.19 crore cut to Taka 9,213.39 crore.

Another official at the planning ministry said the ministry is likely to request Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to increase the government’s fund and keep the ADP size unchanged.

The same thing happened in the last year’s revised ADP as the budget size remained intact but the government’s own fund component was raised by the same amount in that NEC meeting with a slash in foreign aid.

Talking to the national news agency, State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan said although it’s a usual practice in the country to witness slight cut in the ADP during formulation of the RADP, the final decision would ultimately be taken in the NEC meeting with the Prime Minister in the chair.

He said the Prime Minister could keep intact the overall size if there is any request and finally the ultimate adjustment of allocations would be made against the different sectors and ministries after some days of the NEC meeting.

He, however, expressed his high hope that the executing agencies would be able to attain almost cent percent implementation rate this year. ‘There is no doubt that the capacity of the government has increased manifold and the base of our confidence is strong,’ he added.

According to the Planning Commission sources, the transport sector will continue to enjoy the highest priority in the revised ADP followed by power sector, rural development and rural institution sector, physical planning, water supply and housing sector, education and religious sector, science, information and communication technology sector, health, nutrition, population and family planning sector, and agriculture sector.

The data from the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) showed that the ADP implementation rate during the July-February period of the current fiscal year reached 38.01 percent with an overall expenditure of Taka 62,370 crore.

Of the overall expenditure, Taka 33,654 crore were spent from the GoB portion which was 34.94 percent of the overall GoB allocation, Taka 25,339 crore were spent from the project assistance which was 41.94 percent of the overall project assistance allocation while the rest of Taka 3,377 crore were spent from the organization’s own fund portion which was 46.03 percent of its allocation.

The ADP for the current fiscal year features a total of 1308 projects including 1077 investment projects, 111 technical assistant projects, 4 projects from the Japan Debt Cancellation Fund (JDCF) while another 116 projects from the organization’s own fund.

Besides, a list of 360 unapproved projects without having any allocation subject to the availability of foreign funds is also included in the original ADP of the current year.