PESHAWAR, Oct 23: The Peshawar city district’s Rs1.48bn receipts budget for the 2001-02 financial year was presented here on Tuesday, indicating a surplus of Rs25m.
Over Rs1bn, constituting 68 per cent of the total receipts, would be provided to the city district by the provincial government of which some Rs944m would be consumed by non-development expenditure and the remaining Rs70m would be pumped into development works — water supply, sanitation, services.
A sum of Rs154m is shown as the district’s opening balance. Rs216m would flow into the provincial coffers from the Centre on account of the abolished octroi and zila tax.
The city district government anticipates to receive some Rs9m on account of receipts from colleges and Rs93m from ‘other’ sources.
The finance managers of the city district have shown a surplus of Rs25m after setting aside Rs944m non-development expenditure, Rs70m development expenditure and Rs447m local fund expenditure.
The Rs447m ‘local fund expenditure’ includes Rs266m non- developmental expenditure, Rs211m development expenditure and Rs10m for repaying Wapda dues.
The district Nazim Azam Afridi presented the first-ever budget in the district council’s session started here on Tuesday. The deputy district Nazim Dr Iqbal Khalil presided over the session held in the Archives Hall here.
Of the Rs70m development budget — to be 100 per cent funded by the provincial government — some Rs11m would go into development schemes involving water supply, sanitation, works and services sectors.
Besides, Rs23.6m would be spent on schemes covered under the Social Action Programme and Rs35.6m on schemes not covered under this programme.
In line with sub-section 4 of section 109 of the Local Government Ordinance, 2000, the four union councils are set to receive Rs130,895,538 as octroi tax grant of which Town No 1 would get Rs74,372,464, Town No 2 Rs5,949,797, Town No 3 Rs44,623,479 and Town No 4 Rs5,949,797.
The octroi tax grant has been proposed to be transferred to the towns on the basis of urban union councils.
The city district government has proposed to transfer Rs35.8 million to four town councils to compensate them for their approximate budget deficit they are facing due to higher establishment cost.
Of the Rs944m non-developmental expenditure, a sum of Rs1,985,190 has been allocated for district coordination, Rs1,117,700 for civil defence, Rs2,655,500 for finance, Rs477,700 for local fund audit, Rs966,180 for planning and development, Rs9,180,300 for revenue and estate, Rs11,033,621 for provincial estate, Rs7,389,100 for magistracy, Rs629,788,310 for education, Rs83,163,860 for health, Rs70,201,660 for works and services department, Rs5,000,000 for works and services (road repairs), Rs5,000,000 for works and services (building repairs), Rs35,697,910 for public health engineering, Rs13,181,340 for agriculture, Rs7,235,860 for livestock, Rs1,031,671 for forestry, Rs139,410 for wildlife, Rs743,080 for fisheries, Rs1,472,230 for industries, Rs10,882,540 for manpower and training, Rs32,492,810 for technical education, Rs2,867,420 for social welfare, Rs2,062,170 for labour, Rs1,780,910 for cooperative and Rs7,030,600 for local government.
In the development sector, the district government has proposed execution of 50 development schemes — seven relating to water supply, sanitation, works and services sector, 20 under the social action programme, and 23 under non-social action programme. The district government allocated Rs20 million for special development schemes to be proposed by the district Nazim. For the construction and renovation of district secretariat, Rs10 million have been earmarked.
Earlier, addressing the budget session of the district council, district Nazim Azam Afridi said that despite severe financial problems, the district government did not impose new taxes and allocated sufficient amount for development schemes.
Highlighting salient features of the budget, he said that as compared to the previous year, the government reduced the number of ongoing development schemes at the provincial level in order to allocate more funds for the new schemes.
To make the devolution plan a success, he said the government had allocated Rs13,45,66,000 for the Frontier province under the Khushal Pakistan Programme, of which the Peshawar district would receive Rs5,91,56,000 to be spent on 43 ongoing schemes. All the schemes would be completed during the current financial year, he added.
