The Ecnec is set to review a massive project for the Bangladesh Shishu Hospital but architectural experts are already blowing the whistle on a staggering Tk13,100 per square foot budget.
What makes this eye-watering price tag particularly controversial is that it requires no new land acquisition or foundational piling.
Instead, the project, titled ‘Bangladesh Children’s Hospital and Institute Expansion Project-2’, simply involves adding five extra floors to an existing four-story building.
Industry insiders argue the cost is wildly inflated, noting that the budget was already slashed by 30% in a previous round after the Planning Commission threw up early objections to an even higher initial estimate.
If approved, the Tk344 crore 1 lakh 59 thousand initiative will expand the hospital’s C-Block from the 4th to the 9th floor, adding 100 beds and six cabins.
The vertical extension is designed to house desperately needed, highly specialised medical facilities, including paediatric urology, kidney transplantation, surgical oncology, orthopaedic surgery, cardiology, a cath lab, an ICU, and a modern operation theatre. Official documents show that the physical expansion of the non-residential building covers 4,461.17 square metres and is priced at Tk62 crore 99 lakh 46 thousand.
This comes out to exactly Tk1,41,240 and 60 paisa per square metre.
Originally, planners had proposed an astronomical Tk89 crore 3 lakh 81 thousand for the exact same space, which would have cost taxpayers Tk2,00,000 per square metre (about Tk19,000 per square foot), before the Project Evaluation Committee (PEC) deemed it excessive and ordered a re-evaluation.
Real estate professionals and civil engineers have expressed deep scepticism over even these revised, scaled-down numbers.
Zakir Hossain, a director at the private real estate firm Genex Properties Limited, pointed out that building a high-quality structure from the ground up costs between Tk2,500 and Tk4,000 per square foot with piling, and drops to Tk2,000–Tk3,500 if piling is unnecessary. When informed of the hospital’s Tk13,100 per square foot estimate, he remarked that the figure seems incredibly high.
While hospital projects naturally require specialised medical fixtures that drive up costs, architect Omar Faruque, who is also in real estate business, agreed that the current estimate defies logic.
He noted that while hospital construction is expected to be pricier than residential housing, the margins proposed here cross the line into being completely unreasonable.
The financial discrepancies become even more glaring when compared to other massive public works.
For instance, a government project to demolish Building No 1 at the Bangladesh Secretariat and replace it with a brand-new, 21-story building is budgeted at just Tk52,704 per square metre, less than Tk5,000 per square foot.
That budget includes expensive land development and foundational piling, yet architectural experts have still criticised it as wasteful.
Given that a 21-story building is structurally more complex and expensive to build than a 10-story one, engineering professors find the comparatively massive cost of the Shishu Hospital expansion to be highly unusual.
Other public healthcare projects also show a stark contrast. The government’s ongoing initiative to construct 62 eight-story Mother and Child Welfare Centres across 51 districts originally estimated construction at Tk6,654 per square foot excluding furniture and elevators, which immediately drew planning commission objections for being too high. Similarly, a proposal to expand a clinic in Gazipur upward by three stories was flagged when its cost reached Tk4,256 per square foot.
Remarkably, the Shishu Hospital expansion is priced at more than three times that Gazipur project.
M Shamsul Hoque, a professor of civil engineering at Buet, emphasised that while quality drives construction costs, the estimates for this project are disproportionately high, suggesting that introducing true competition into the tender process could drastically lower the budget.
Another Buet professor of civil engineering, speaking anonymously, added that a rigorous audit of the design and materials is urgently needed.
Attempts to get answers from officials have met with bureaucratic silence.
When reached for comment regarding the inflated budget, Nasreen Jahan, a member and secretary of the Planning Commission’s socio-economic infrastructure division, directed inquiries to her personal assistant, Siddiqur Rahman.
Siddiqur deferred twice, saying he could only speak on the matter after the Ecnec meeting took place, ultimately advising reporters to call back later.
Despite the controversy surrounding the civil works, the lion’s share of the project’s overall budget is actually tied to medical equipment procurement rather than bricks and mortar. Out of the total project cost, Tk253 crore 11 lakh 46 thousand, roughly 74%, has been allocated to purchase 1,398 pieces of medical machinery. The remaining funds are earmarked for 1,703 pieces of furniture, 172 pieces of office equipment, and advanced hospital automation software.
Because the overall initiative exceeds the Tk50 crore threshold, it requires a green light from Ecnec. If it secures approval on Tuesday, implementation is scheduled to run from July 2026 through June 2028.
Seven years in the making
The project proposal for the expansion of the Shishu Hospital was first presented in 2019, before being sent to the Planning Commission on 16 June.
The Project Evaluation Committee (PEC) met on 14 July of that year, with the minutes of that meeting issued on 26 August.
At the time, the Awami League was in power. Five years later, following the administration’s overthrow in a mass uprising, the incoming interim government revised and resubmitted the proposal to the Planning Commission on 23 June 2025.
The PEC convened once more on 29 July, and the minutes were subsequently issued on 7 August. On 2 February this year, the revised expenditure proposal was presented to the Planning Commission yet again.
The project was then submitted to the Planning Minister for approval on 24 February, which was granted on 12 May.
In the final stage of the process, the Development Project Proposal (DPP) was sent to the NEC-Ecnec division, alongside the necessary documentation, ahead of its presentation to the Ecnec.
The project is scheduled for implementation with a projected expenditure of Tk344.6 crore in the 2025-26 fiscal year, Tk206.36 crore in the 2026-27 fiscal year, and Tk 103.18 crore in the 2027-28 fiscal year.
