May 7, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 4, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, May 6: The government has decided to increase the allocation for poverty related and social sector expenditure in the next budget by Rs24 billion.

“The poverty related and social sector expenditure is being increased from present Rs161 billion to Rs185 billion in the budget for 2003-04,” said Finance Ministry Economic Adviser Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan.

Talking to Dawn on Monday, Dr Khan, who is also the director general of the Debt Coordination Office, said that major funding would go to the poverty alleviation programmes, construction of farm-to-market roads, health, education and women development.

He said that the public sector development programme (PSDP) for next financial year would also be considerably increased separately. He said that no cut would be made in the current the PSDP of Rs134 billion to narrow the budget deficit.

“The government is currently finalizing the size of the new PSDP which will have an adequate increase due to advantage of not paying huge amount on annual debt servicing,” the economic adviser said.

Responding to a question, he said that the government would seek budgetary support from its bilateral and multilateral donors to spend more on poverty alleviation and other social sectors.

Mr Khan also informed that a three-day meeting of the Pakistan Development Forum (PDF), formerly known as Aid to Pakistan Consortium, would be held in the federal capital from May 12 to 14 in which the state of the Pakistani economy would be discussed.

It would specially take into account the first nine months (July-March) of the current financial year. The PDF meeting was no more a pledging session but the participants would themselves assess the funding requirement of the country, he added.

Asked how was the government allocating more resources for poverty alleviation and development, he said that it was due to drastic cut in the amount of internal debt servicing.

He said budget deficit has reduced and the cost of borrowing of the government was also declining that was helping the government to allocate more resources for poverty reduction and social sectors.

“Debt servicing as a percentage of total revenue was 66 per cent in 1998-99 which is projected to decline to 44 per cent by the end of current financial year,” he added.

In reply to a question the economic adviser said that the next budget would have more emphasis on achieving future growth target and promoting investment.