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Speaker for ensuring transparency, accountability in public expenditures


Bangladeshpost
Published : 17 Nov 2019 09:08 PM | Updated : 27 Aug 2020 08:14 AM

As transparency is a pre-requisite to witness a nation’s expected forward march, Jatiya Sangsad Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury on Sunday pleaded for ensuring transparency and accountability in public expenditures to strengthen democracy and keep up economic stability of the country, reports BSS. 

“Misuse of public money can be checked by strengthening more the PA (Public Accounts) committee, CAG (Comptroller of Auditor General) office and Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in this connection,” the speaker said, addressing a roundtable on “Promoting Accountability and Integrity in Government Spending” organized by World Bank, Bangladesh, at a city hotel.

She also put emphasis on amending necessary laws regarding this, imparting training for capacity building to all concerned and organsing view-exchange-meeting between the Members of Parliament (MPs) and experts.

“If the concerned officials, being liable to the people, remain more cautious about spending of projects’ money, the economic development will be accelerated,” Dr Chaudhury observed. Noting that it is government’s sole responsibility to ensure transparency and accountability in spending government’s money in favour of mass people, she said, “There is no alternative to ensuring honesty and accountability in all the government’s activities.

The Speaker highly appreciated the programme, saying that this arrangement would create more awareness in expending public money with transparency. “If the trend of misusing pubic money spreads in a large scale, the transparency and accountability in administration, politics and social system will reduce . . . As a result, the country’s microeconomic stability gets ruined,” the Speaker added.

World Bank’s Acting Country Director for Bangladesh Dandan Chen, CAG of Bangladesh Mohammad Muslim Chowdhury, ACC Chairman Iqbal Mahmood and Director General of CAG Office in India Sunil Shreekrisnhaw, among others, spoke there.

Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts M Rustum Ali Faraji , MP, Chairman of the JS Standing Committee on Estimates M Abdus Saheed, MP, lawmakers and high officials concerned took part in the roundtable.