According to newspaper reports, various electricity generation, water, agriculture, transport and social sector projects, which were funded by the Asian Development Bank, have either been placed on watch list or became problematic, revealing a not-so-undisclosed secret of bad governance in Pakistan.Out of $6.7 billion projects, at least $3.6 billion of them are facing problems, maintained the officials who attended one-month-long portfolio review meetings. The projects and schemes are at various stages of implementation and are facing strict scrutiny from the bank officials. At least 60 percent projects are found on track and the rest face various kind of problems, showing bleak performance of the departments concerned. It has become a fashion to take loans from international financial institutions for one reason or the other and most of the loans add burden to the national economy, but allegedly fill the pockets of private individuals. The reports suggest the departments lag behind meeting the contract awards and disbursements, wasting half of the year. In the absence of accountability in the departments, the bureaucratic inefficiencies are on the rise, specifically at a time when the country faces political instability.
The world donor institutions which offer conditional loans don’t sleep after handing over the money to the beneficiary countries and monitor the performance of projects keeping in view the projections of contract awards and disbursements. The country needs capacity building programmes for the government officials to meeting the challenges of emerging situations. The troubled projects are a burden on the economy and good governance is the answer to reap the benefits of socio-economic schemes. The decades old electricity network is a problem to wheel the electricity to consumers and a big cause of line losses. A part of the loan was meant to upgrade the transmission network, but mismanagement and maladministration made it impossible to take appropriate action.
The energy sector investment of the bank is worth $3 billion which represents 43 percent of the active portfolio of projects whereas the transport sector is the second major area, representing almost 26 percent of the active projects. Both energy and transport sectors account for 69 percent of the active loan portfolio by end of the previous fiscal year. The energy situation has still not improved and the country has been facing debt crisis in the coming months. The leadership, which is responsible for launching the project, has gone and it is yet to be seen who will be next negotiating partner from Pakistan to answer to the questions of the world financial institutions.
