PESHAWAR: NWFP not given hydel profit share for 3 months
By Intikhab Amir
PESHAWAR, Nov 11: The North West Frontier Province has not been paid any amount so far against its net hydel profit share for the current financial year, according to provincial cabinet sources.
The Water and Power Development Authority has committed to pay NWFP Rs6 billion as capped share amount under net hydel profit during 2001-02.
However, according to sources, even at the close of the first quarter of the fiscal year the province had not received any amount.
“By Nov 15, the province is supposed to be released net hydel profit share for four months, however, there is a complete silence on the part of Wapda on this count,” a source and added, “as the authority has not released anything to Peshawar against its share for the first three months of the current financial year (supposed to be paid by Oct 15).”
The NWFP government expects Wapda to release the provincial net hydel profit share in 12 monthly instalments of Rs500m each against its total annual share of Rs6bn - capped share amount.
However, ever since Wapda’s management has been assigned to military, the province has never received the share on monthly basis, though it received full amount of capped share by the close of every financial year.
Silence on the part of Wapda, said the sources, had added to the financial woes of the provincial government already facing budgetary deficit of billions of rupees by the close of the first four months of the financial year.
According to sources, by Oct 15, the NWFP should have received Rs1500m and by Nov 15, Rs2000m, from Wapda.
“Against that the account for the current financial year has yet to be opened as financial disbursements from Wapda to NWFP stands at the zero level,” said the sources.
As a result of non-payment of profit, the provincial government’s budgetary deficit comes to Rs2bn - only under one head - if the benchmark for the annual share is calculated at Rs6bn.
The shortfall under the head comes to Rs4.28bn if the annual share on account of the profit is calculated at Rs12.899bn - a claim the province has made in its current financial year’s budget document in line with the annual projections of the 1996 National Finance Commission award and in accordance with the A.G.N. Kazi formula agreed between the NWFP, Wapda and the federal government in the early 1990s.
