November 2, 2001	Friday	Shaba’an 15, 1422

PESHAWAR, Nov 1: The NWFP has a throw-forward liability of Rs9 billion to ensure completion of some 373 development schemes during the next five years, official sources told Dawn here on Wednesday.

Provincial government, said the sources, would need to arrange Rs9 billion during the next five years to fulfil its commitments in respect of completing some 373 on-going schemes.

Throw-forward liability — funds the province requires to complete on-going developmental works in the coming years — kept on increasing over the years as the successive provincial governments could not specify greater amount of funds to complete the on-going schemes.

Persistent resource crunch for the last several years and introduction of new development schemes without specifying much funds to get the under progress schemes completed kept on increasing the size of the on-going schemes’ portfolio.

This not only resulted in an ill-planned development across the province with every government in the past failing to utilize in the best possible way the whatever meagre development funds the province had, but increase in the on-going schemes’ portfolio also made the province to suffer considerable financial losses.

The sources said that as the province failed to bring down the size of its on-going schemes’ portfolio it underwent huge financial losses due to inflationary trends and increase in the construction materials’ prices recorded over the years.

Successive provincial governments failure to complete development schemes at a quick pace, mainly due to the resource crunch, inflationary trends and price-hike led to escalating the initially estimated cost of several projects.

The exercise to assess the overall quantum of the province’s throw-forward liability, for the next five years, had been carried out in line with the provincial government’s preparations for making its case before the National Finance Commission and to evaluate the throw-forward liability each district government of the province had, said the sources in the Planning, Environment and Development department, NWFP.

On the instructions of the provincial finance department, said the sources, PE & D department had recently submitted district- wise throw-forward liability situation and so as the consolidated picture to have a clear picture for the future planning.

“The same data,” said the sources, “ would also be used in the under-progress preparation of the Provincial Finance Commission.”