PESHAWAR, Oct 6: The NWFP Education Department spent a record amount in the fiscal 2002-03 after being pushed hard by the World Bank to meet its conditionalities or risk aid termination.

“The funds’ utilization ratio was a record,” an official concerned of the provincial education department told Dawn on Monday.

An amount of Rs11.14 billion out of the total released amount of Rs11.49 billion was utilized, showing an alltime high expenditure in a year, an unusual departure from the past.

“The marked improvement was achieved mainly to meet World Bank conditionalities on the education sector,” said the official.

He said the utilization of funds picked up during the last three months of the last financial year making it possible for the provincial government to utilize 96 per cent of the funds released for the recurring expenditure and 82 per cent of the amount provided under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) to carry out development works across the province.

Once procedural hurdles were removed by the start of the fourth quarter of the last financial year an expenditure spree followed.

The provincial government’s efforts to improve the situation, said the official, also won laurels from the World Bank which highly appreciated the efforts of the department to meet its requirements.

More than 90 per cent of development schemes such as construction of boundary walls, latrines and additional class rooms, particularly, in the public sector girls’ schools.

Required by the World Bank to get assistance under its Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC) facility for the second consecutive year, the provincial government has raised the size of education sector allocation for the 2003-04 financial year registering an improvement by 13 per cent over and above the last financial year’s projection.

This time round the provincial government has specified a sum of Rs13.18 billion (for recurring and development expenditure) against Rs11.653 billion allocation made for the last financial year.

Official sources said that in an attempt to avoid a repetition of the last financial year’s experience, this time round, the authorities concerned had been released development funds in bulk in addition to making them prepare PC-Is of the development projects at an early stage of the current fiscal year.