The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) on Tuesday approved 17 development projects involving an estimated cost of Tk 8,974.28 crore. The meeting was held at the NEC Conference Room in the Planning Commission with Chief Adviser and ECNEC Chairperson Dr. Muhammad Yunus in the chair.
Of the total project cost, Tk 3,180.34 crore will come from the government’s own funds, Tk 5,563.43 crore will be sourced as project assistance (loans), and the remaining Tk 230.51 crore will come from the implementing agencies.
Of the approved projects, 11 are new, five are revised, and one project was granted a time extension without additional expenditure.
Some of the notable projects include the second phase of the Upazila Complex Expansion Project (2nd Revised), the Integrated Services and Livelihood Improvement of forcibly displaced Rohingyas and their host communities, and the construction of 200-bed drug addiction cure and rehabilitation centres in seven divisional cities. Other key initiatives approved were enhancing the capacity of four newly built marine academies by installing simulators, improving access to justice for women, and the establishment of the third submarine cable to boost international telecommunications.
The committee also gave the green light for the construction of 13 new buffer godowns in 13 districts for better fertilizer preservation and distribution, along with strengthening the Kishore-Kishori Club, integrated services for quick response to prevent repression against women and children, the TVET Teachers for the Future (TTF) programme, and a countrywide mobile library.
Additionally, various administrative and capacity-building projects such as the Strengthening Development Budget Management System through digital database installation at the programming division, the Improvement of Public Investment Management System (IPIMS), Procurement Modernization to Improve Public Service Delivery (PMIPSD), Statistical Capacity Enhancement and Modernization Project (SCEMP), Strengthening Public Audit through Digital Transformation and Capacity Enhancement (SPADTEC), and Strengthening Domestic Revenue Mobilization Project (SDRMP) were also approved.
These five projects under the Planning Division, Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, National Board of Revenue (NBR), and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) will be implemented as umbrella projects under the Strengthening Institution for Transparency and Accountability (SITA) programme funded by the World Bank.
The ECNEC meeting was also informed about 15 other projects earlier approved by the Planning Adviser. Advisers, Planning Commission members, secretaries, and other senior officials were present at the meeting.