ISLAMABAD, March 16: The pro-poor budgetary expenditure in six core sectors, out of a total of 23, has declined during the first half of the current fiscal year when compared with the same period last year.

The official figures for the first half of the current year on a country-wide poverty related expenditure suggest that areas where the poverty related expenditure has reduced include rural development, food subsidies, low cost housing, health facilities and preventive measures, general universities and colleges and professional and technical institutions.

In overall terms, the PRSP expenditure has, however, increased by more than 16 per cent to Rs98.4 billion when compared with Rs82.3 billion during the first six months of the last year.

The data will be submitted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after the 3-day meeting of Pakistan Development Forum (PDF) starting from Wednesday. A comparison of the data reveals that expenditure on food subsidies has dropped by around 39 per cent to Rs2.03 billion during the first half of the current fiscal against Rs2.8 billion of the same period last year.

The expenditure on low cost housing also reduced by 40 per cent to Rs21 million during the first six months of the current fiscal against Rs35 million of the corresponding period last year.

Similarly, the expenditure on health and preventive measures registered a drastic reduction of about 80 per cent to Rs266 million against Rs1.3 billion of the same period last year.

Furthermore, the utilization of funds for rural development also dropped by about 30 per cent to Rs5.2 billion against Rs7.4 billion of the same period last year.

The expenditure on general universities, colleges and institutes came down by 32 per cent to Rs3 billion against Rs4.5 billion of the same period last year. The expenditure on professional and technical universities and colleges also shrank by more than 22 per cent to Rs1.28 billion from Rs1.65 billion of the comparable period last year.

This drop in expenditure has taken place despite the new policy of expenditure management allowing the federal ministries to spend 50 per cent of public sector development programme allocations in social sectors and 45 per cent in other sectors during the first half of the financial year without reference to prior approvals.

Major sectors where poverty related expenditure has registered significant increase during the first half of the year include roads and highways, water supply and sanitation, education sector, health and irrigation. The expenditure on roads and highways was Rs4.9 billion, up by 46 per cent from Rs3.35 billion of the same period last year.

Similarly, expenditure on education increased by 23 per cent to Rs43.6 billion as against Rs33.4 billion of the same period last year. The government, however, claims that provinces have been advised to gear up the pace of expenditure in the sectors that are lagging and ensure meeting the quarterly quantitative targets.

At the same time, a fast track approach would have to beadopted in ironing out issues of releases, bookings, disbursements and utilisations between provincial, district and tehsil governments to ensure that pro-poor expenditures remain in line with the government's medium-term targets.

These measures would have to be supplemented by institutionalising effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to measure the social impact of these outlays especially at the district level.

Under the world bank and IMF directives, the PRSP's expenditures range has been expanded to include spending on law and order, administration of justice and village electrification because of their close nexus with determinants of poverty as a result of dialogues with the grass root communities through rural support programme network and participatory poverty assessment.