All ministries to sign performance agreements with cabinet division to increase efficiency

The government in a frantic move is seeking to boost the activities of its entire machinery and increase accountability and decided to strike performance agreements with all ministries amid weakening governance that hit its popularity base. The ministries would be liable to achieve their targets to be laid out in their respective agreements that are expected to be signed in a couple of months, a senior government secretary said. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina this past week approved the proposal in this connection, and the cabinet division has been given the authority to sign agreements with all 40 ministries. ‘Increasing efficiency of the ministries and boosting their activities to serve people more inclusively are the major objectives of the proposed agreements between the ministries and the cabinet division,’ cabinet division secretary Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told New Age on Monday.

‘We expect to sign the performance agreements latest by February, as a core committee is working to finalise the modus operandi of the proposed agreement by next month,’ he said. Prime Minister’s Office, finance ministry and cabinet division jointly prepared a draft PA, which has been sent to cabinet division for approval, sources said. The draft PA, a copy of which obtained by New Age, has excluded office of the president, parliament secretariat, election commission, public service commission and anti-corruption commission from signing the agreement. The PA will be signed for a period of one year with a provision of reviewing the status after six months, the draft spelled out. The cabinet division has recently set up ‘coordination and reform unit’ at its office, which is headed by a government secretary to coordinate and streamline the PAs. ‘We are busy preparing and fine-tuning indicators of all ministries to be included in the proposed agreements,’ a senior cabinet division official said. He said all ministries had been asked to submit their goals and indicators to be achieved in a given year. Based on the submitted indicators and documents, which should be guided by ‘ministry budget framework’, the cabinet division will go ahead for signing PAs having authority to make revisions on the ministries’ indicators and estimates, he added.

The draft PA said PA should be aligned to the strategic objectives and priorities stated in the perspective plan 2010-2021 and  6th five year plan of the government. Explaining the modus operandi of the PA, an official concerned citing the proposed PA of communication ministry said the ministry will outline its performance targets in a year, such as on completing large projects like Dhaka-Chittagong four lane project, reducing travel time from Dhaka to Mymensingh or increasing traffic management and lessening traffic congestion in the capital. On  PA for finance ministry, the official said the finance ministry in its PA has to commit issues like base line for of budget deficit, reducing non-performing loans, percentage of debt to GDP and estimates for revenue and economic growths. Another senior official at the division, who attended a number of meetings in the Prime Minister’s Office relating the PAs for all ministries, said the latest move had been taken to invigorate government machinery to ensure good governance. ‘Prime minister Sheikh Hasina wants to give the ministries a wake-up call, as she appear to be dissatisfied with the poor performance of the total administration,’ the official told New Age, preferring not to be named. Musharraf, when asked about the rational of the proposed PA and whether the move was taken to fix the weakening governance and bid to restore the falling popularity of the government said, ‘Many countries in the world including India introduced the PA system to streamline governance and increase the accountability’.

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