PESHAWAR, Sept 7: The NWFP government’s bid to initiate about 1,000 development schemes under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the financial year 2003-4 has not been welcomed by some of the international lending agencies, well-placed sources told Dawn.

“The decision to include so many new development schemes in the ADP has not been greeted by the lending agencies,” said a development planner of the provincial government.

The Rs14.69 billion Annual Development Programme for the 2003-04 financial year — an all-time high development expenditure plan — includes 1,325 development schemes.

Other than hundreds of new schemes being launched under the federally funded Drought Emergency Relief Assistance programme (Dera) and the provincially funded Tameer-i-Sarhad Programme, the 2003-04 financial year’s ADP also included about 850 schemes including 295 ongoing and 552 new schemes.

The fact that the province would require over Rs26 billion to complete these 850 schemes (other than Dera and Tameer-i-Sarhad Programmes) in the years to come has not been taken well by the donor agencies.

Even the senior development planners of the province were not happy with the government decision, the sources said.

“Not only that the province’s throw-forward liability on account of development schemes has increased manifold, all the more the line departments of the provincial government do not have the expertise and capacity to properly execute, monitor and complete so many development schemes,” said a senior officer of a development agency of the province.

Official sources said the government’s decision to enhance the scope of development programme had also not been taken well by the World Bank — an important lender to the NWFP government.

“World Bank wants the province to bring down the number of its development schemes being carried out under the ADP,” said a senior development planner.

The lending agency, the officer added, wanted the province to reduce the number of development schemes even during the last financial year when total number of schemes covered under the ADP for 2002-03 fiscal year stood at about 400.

According to official documents available with Dawn, the throw-forward liabilities of the development schemes at the start of the 2003-04 financial year registered a growth by over 560 per cent in comparison with the outgoing financial year.

At the beginning of the last financial year, the provincial government required Rs14.4 billion to complete its development schemes covered under the provincially funded component of the Annual Development Programme .

The document contains that the increasing throw-forward liability would apparently restrict options for the province in the years to come and might cause delays and budgetary imbalances in the coming years.