Governance crisis behind project delays

The ERD presentation identifies the usual obstacles to project readiness – procurement complications, land acquisition delays, ownership gaps, and weak project design. These are real and persistent. The presentation's treatment of design flaws is reasonably developed, but its analysis does not extend with equal seriousness to the other problems it names.

In effect, the diagnosis is partial: the symptoms are listed, but the underlying institutional incentives and political economy drivers remain unexamined.

The section on "issues to be resolved" is narrowly framed around procedural frictions between the government and the World Bank: restrictions on advances, requests for extensions, definitional questions around the active portfolio, and the time allowed between negotiation packages and negotiation dates. These are operational matters, not the structural constraints that actually derail implementation. The discussion reads more like a briefing for bilateral meetings than an attempt to confront the larger impediments to project execution.

The proposed "way forward" focuses on readiness for signing – DPP/TAPP approval, appointment of project directors, land acquisition completion, resettlement planning, cost estimation, and finalisation of SLAs and MoUs. These steps are necessary, but they are not sufficient. Readiness for signing is not readiness for implementation.

The real challenge is enforcing compliance with these requirements after approval and addressing the governance failures that routinely undermine execution. The absence of any reference to corruption is striking. Its omission does not make it any less central; it simply reflects the discomfort in naming a problem that operates like a cancer within project governance.

The recommendations on capacity building, developing DPPs within implementing agencies, ERD workshops, matrices in DPPs, and joint SOP development with the World Bank are oriented towards improving documentation and accelerating disbursement. They do not address whether institutions possess the discipline, incentives, and accountability needed for development readiness.

The concluding call for improved communication, stakeholder alignment, and enhanced collaboration is generic. Without confronting the governance pathologies that shape project behaviour, such exhortations risk remaining aspirational rather than actionable.

Zahid Hussain is former lead economist of World Bank Dhaka office