Quality of Public Investment in Bangladesh: An Annexure to Independent Review of Bangladesh's Development 1996

The current volume on Quality of Public Investment in Bangladesh embodies the results of a set of in-depth surveys carried out by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in order to examine the quality of design, implementation and monitoring of eight of the major public sector undertakings in Bangladesh. Whilst an executive summary of the major findings of this pioneering investigation has appeared as a separate chapter in Growth or Stagnation? A Review of Bangladesh's Development 1996 (IRBD 1996), the current annexure volume to IRBD 1996 details out the findings of the investigation concerning each of the eight projects which were put under close scrutiny in the course of the review. The analysis presented in this volume is based on extensive field surveys. The review provides a wealth of information about the quality of project management in Bangladesh including design of the projects, phasing of various components of these projects, quality of implementation, economic viability and sustainability of the projects. Whilst the review focuses on only a limited number of projects, the observations, conclusions, and policy implications relate to the overall investment environment existing in the country and as such the review provides practical and useful insights into the efficacy of the overall development process in Bangladesh. From this perspective the review will be of immense benefit to policymakers, donors who underwrite most of these projects and development practitioners who will be able to learn much from the review about operational problems of development management. At the same time the general readership, who as major stakeholders of the development process have a genuine interest in being informed about how scarce public resources are used in the public sector, will be able to see how far they get value for money. The volume is thus expected to contribute towards an informed debate concerning issues related to improving the state of governance in Bangladesh.