The planning ministry issued the new RADP rules and regulations yesterday as part of the caretaker government's initiative to revise the ADP.

The new RADP will accord power and energy highest importance while agriculture and infrastructure-related projects will also receive priority for approval.

Out of 1,472 projects under the ongoing ADP, 586 are unapproved and without funds; of these, 429 unapproved projects are without funds and 157 others will be funded by donors.

Currently 886 projects are being implemented under the ongoing ADP.

The immediate past BNP-led coalition government approved 80 projects at the end of its term during the current fiscal.

The new rules and regulations for the upcoming RADP emphasise the need for prioritising projects for inclusion in the RADP and asked for suspension of projects deemed "not important".

If the locally funded projects cannot be cut from the RADP, they would be marked as "de-prioritised" for slow implementation, while the donor-funded projects have been prioritised.

Finance Adviser Mirza Azizul Haque met with high-level planning ministry officials to discuss the criteria for project approval in the RADP and which projects would be sent to the Executive Committee on National Economic Council (Ecnec) for approval.

The Ecnec, which has not met since the BNP-led government handed over power to the caretaker government, may hold a meeting next week.

Sources also said the planning ministry will review the ongoing projects under the current ADP in a meeting next week.

The decision to approve or disapprove projects will be taken by the end of February to determine the size of the RADP.

Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Md Aminul Islam Bhuiyan led a government delegation at a meeting yesterday while local USAID country chief Gene George led the local consultative group (LCG) of donors. The meeting was held at the National Economic Council auditorium.

The ERD secretary informed the LCG about the new caretaker government's commitment to reforming and expediting the government development programmes. He also urged the LCG to quickly release funds in the pipeline to accelerate implementation of the donor-funded ADP programmes.

Sources said currently nearly $900 million of the earmarked donor funds is still in the pipeline. A poor disbursement of $294 million took place in the six months of the current fiscal year while $1.5 billion was disbursed in the last fiscal year.

The LCG asked the government to apprise them of the progress on the 11 key action points agreed by the government and its development partners to apply before the next Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation Forum (PIFM).

The LCG also proposed holding the fourth meeting of the PIFM Joint Committee for Monitoring the Implementation Progress of the poverty reduction strategy in the third week of February.