ISLAMABAD:The coalition government has so far spent hardly Rs424 billion or less than 40% of the annual downward revised development budget, impacting construction work and cash flows of hundreds of projects, including schemes of the provinces and merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The only exceptions to lower spending were the projects related to parliamentarians, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco), showed the official documents.
The official data of the Planning Commission showed that from July through the middle of April (nine and half months), the development expenditures amounted to Rs424 billion or 39% of the annual budget. The downward revised Public Sector Development Programme is worth Rs1.1 trillion, which is spread over 1,071 projects.
Under the Finance Ministry’s release strategy, 60% of the annual budget can be spent during the first nine months of this fiscal year. But the spending remained below this threshold by at least Rs260 billion. This is despite the fact that the Planning Commission had authorized Rs890 billion spending during this period but the actual expenditures were far lower than the budget spending strategy and the authorized spending.
When contacted, the Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said that compared to the last year, the spending during the nine-month period was still higher by Rs102 billion. He said that the monthly spending in March this year was also higher by Rs27 billion.
However, the details showed that despite being higher than last year’s spending; the overall situation was not good, which impacted many projects.The official documents showed that the already approved Rs1.1 trillion budget is not adequately spent on the development schemes.
According to these documents, the government had allocated Rs276.5 billion for projects in provinces, special areas and merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. But the actual spending till April 15th remained at Rs98.5 billion or 36% of the annual allocation.
Within this spending, an amount of Rs56.6 billion was spent on AJK and GB projects, which was equal to 76% of the annual budget and higher than the ceiling.
But on the merged districts of KP only Rs15.8 billion or 23% of its Rs70 billion allocation was spent. These merged districts are adversely affected by the terror attacks and are under-developed but yet it could not get the attention of the Prime Minister.
For the provincial projects, Rs132 billion have been allocated but the spending remains at just Rs26 billion or 20% of the annual allocation.
