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Economists see hardly any results 

The government every year spends substantial amounts for various kinds of training for public servants at home and abroad, but economists have said that the exercise has brought hardly any results.

Among the most evident instances in this regard are the less than expected implementation rate of the annual development programme and the failure in achieving revenue targets, they observe.

Harassment faced by the general public in getting government services in the health, education, transport, trade and commerce and different other sectors also show that the efficiency level of the public servants has not improved. 

For the current financial year of 2024–25, the government has earmarked Tk 5,272.29 crore for training purpose with newarly 73 per cent or Tk 3,832.79 crore kept under the Annual Development Programme, also called the development budget.

The rest of Tk 1,439.50 has been kept under the non-development budget.

Almost every development project contains training activities held both at home and abroad with those held in foreign countries are called study tours.

The overseas study tours are preferred by mid and top-ranked officers with ministries and divisions having a tendency to include study tours in the project proposals and get those passed by the highest forum of the Bangladesh Planning Commission, government officials have said.

They have also said that in a rather recent development, civil servants under study tour programmes tour foreign countries to inspect goods to be procured from different manufacturers there.    

But the growing number of development projects with cost and time overrun show little improvement in the project execution capacity, said former World Bank Dhaka office chief economist Zahid Hussain.

The number of revised projects in the ADP for FY2023–24 was 429, for  FY2022–23 it was 369, for FY2021–22 the number was 326, and for FY2020–21 the number of projects was 285, according to the data from the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division under the planning ministry.

Zahid Hussain said that the finance ministry should make a cost-benefit analysis of the fund spent in the development budget for overseas training.

Over the past five years between FY2023–24 and FY2019–20, some Tk 18,873 crore was spent for training under the development and non-development budgets, according to the finance ministry documents.

In FY2019–20, a total of Tk 4,064.68 crore was spent for training purpose with Tk 2,993.39 spent under the development budget, and Tk 1,071.29 crore under the non-development budget.

During that financial year, a seven-member team visited the Philippines and Indonesia in November 4–15, 2019 to gather knowledge on the functioning of the village court system.

The team included three Local Government Division officials, including Roxana Quader, director of a project on the village court system, but she retired in the next three months of the training.

Such examples of senior government officials having study tours just before retirement are many.

It raises questions over the selection of the trainees, said Mustafa K Mujeri, executive director of think tank Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development Economists.

The pleasure trips in the name of overseas training and study tours under the development budget and training under the non-development budget dropped in FY2020–21 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

In FY2020–21, total Tk 2,833 crore was spent for training with Tk 1,803.78 crore of the total spent from the development budget, while the rest Tk 940.18 from the non-development budget.

In FY2021–22, the government kept aside Tk 2,777 crore for training under the development budget and Tk 1,239 crore under the non-development budget amid an economic crisis deepened by foreign currency crunches.

The ministry of finance from that year on imposed restrictions on overseas study trips under the development budget.

Still, in the next financial year of FY2022–23, the government could not avoid earmarking Tk 3,914.80 crore for training with Tk 2,568 crore of it taken from the development budget.

The interim government, assuming power after the ouster of the Awami League regime in the wake of a mass uprising in August 2024, has maintained the restrictions on overseas study tours with the public fund.

In January this year the government cancelled a gazette made in 2024 allowing 50 officers from the judiciary to take part in training courses in judicial academies in India.

The finance ministry, however, has not put any restrictions on taking foreign study and training trips by civil servants if the entire cost of the training is paid by the inviting agencies, said ministry officials.

But planning ministry officials said that despite ban on overseas study tours with public fund, ministries and divisions were still submitting proposals with the provision of overseas training. 

The Local Government Division in a project proposal for improving infrastructure like drains and culverts in Manikganj it submitted to the planning ministry early March sought Tk 2 crore allocations for overseas study trips.

In October 2024, the agriculture ministry sought Tk 2.56 crore for study tours in  its proposed project on the use of surface water in Sylhet.

Former planning division secretary Ashadul Islam said that keeping block allocations for projects should be stopped to check the practice of overseas tours.

He also underscored strengthening of the monitoring system to stop unnecessary overseas tours under development projects.

Corruption watchdog the Transparency International Bangladesh’s executive director Iftekharuzzaman also noted that the planning commission should improve its monitoring system to prevent the wastage of public funds.