TDS Desk:

Professor Muhammad Yunus-led interim government will hold its first Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting on Wednesday to endorse eight development projects.

The projects, including an amendment project titled ‘Land Acquisition’ worth Tk 5,899 crore for upgrading the Faridpur-Bhanga-Barishal-Patuakhali-Kuakata national highway to four lanes, are coming up in the meeting.

The meeting will be held at the office of the Chief Adviser. Before this, a meeting was held in the NEC meeting of the Planning Commission.

ECNEC meeting will be chaired by ECNEC chairperson and chief advisor of the interim government Prof Muhammad Yunus.

Khandkar Ahsan Hossain, Head (Additional Secretary) of the Planning Commission’s Operations Department told the media that the meeting will be held on September 18 (Wednesday). However, this year’s ECNEC meeting will not be held in our commission because if it was here, we would have received a letter. This time several meetings will be held at the chief adviser’s office.

According to Planning Commission sources, after the launch of the Padma Bridge, the project titled ‘Land Acquisition’ was approved to ECNEC in 2018 for upgrading the Faridpur-Bhanga-Barishal-Patuakhali-Kuakata national highway to four lanes taken up by the Department of Roads and Public Roads for the development of the communication system in the southern region.

For the acquisition of land under the project, the cost was estimated at 1,867 crore 85 lakh 90 thousand taka. The project was scheduled to be completed by June 2020 as per ECNEC’s decision. However, due to various complications, the land acquisition work was not completed within the stipulated time.

Later the duration of the project was extended till June 30, 2021, in the first phase. However, the expenditure was not increased. But as the work was not completed, the project was extended by two years till June 2023. Even so, the work did not progress much. As a result, the implementing authority sent a proposal to extend the time for two years to the Planning Commission. It is proposed to increase the cost of the project by 223 per cent to 650 crore 53 lakh taka.

A Project Evaluation Committee (PEC) meeting was held on the proposal. In the meeting, the cost of various sectors of the project has been reduced by 5,899 crores and recommended to be raised in the ECNEC meeting.

According to the amendment proposal document, the cost of the project has been increased due to the increase in the amount and cost of land acquisition, increase in the survey and utility transfer sector and extension of the implementation period by two years.

The reason for the revision of the project is that the amount of land acquisition has been fixed at 860.622 acres instead of 302.70 acres. For this, 4,007 crore 72 lakh taka has increased in this sector.

Besides, an increase of Tk 173 crore in the utility sector and Tk 1 crore 20 lakh in the survey sector has been proposed. For this, it has been proposed to extend the period till June 2025.