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| 17 June 2004 | Thursday | 28 Rabi-us-Saani 1425 |
Rs122.90bn budget for Sindh
KARACHI, June 16: Sindh Finance Minister Syed Sardar Ahmad presented in the provincial assembly on Wednesday a Rs122.90 billion budget for the year 2004-05, with an operational revenue deficit of Rs4.22 billion.
The budget shows revenue expenditure of Rs104.90 billion and a record development outlay of Rs20.80 billion, including Rs18 billion for ADP and Rs2.80 billion foreign and federal funded development programmes.
The minister estimated a total revenue of Rs100.68 billion for the fiscal year. This income includes federal transfers of Rs84.16 billion and collection of Rs16.51 billion from the provincial revenue sources.
The deficit of Rs4.22 billion is further widened by Rs1.22 billion in the current capital account, pushing the total shortfall to Rs5.43 billion. The minister did not elaborate how the ambitious Rs18 billion ADP for the next fiscal year would be financed.
"Provincial contribution and funding of oversized Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) will be subject to availability of the resources," the budget statement said.
In line with the decision of the federal government, Syed Sardar Ahmad announced an ad hoc relief of 15 per cent for the employees of the provincial government and ad hoc relief of 16 per cent for those who had retired before 1994 and eight per cent for other retired employees.
The minister spoke about the extreme constraints on Sindh which stemmed from an 'unfriendly' 1997 NFC award, the acute drought which reduced irrigated land in Sindh by over 40 per cent followed by rains which caused widespread damage to standing crops.
However, he found some fiscal space to announce a few relief measures. He announced that 150,000 jobs would be created in the province during the next fiscal year.
The minister also announced an increase of Rs3.53 billion in the revenue expenditure during the current fiscal year to Rs93.08 billion and a shortfall of Rs5.35 billion in income which declined to Rs85.56 billion from the originally estimated Rs90.91 billion for 2003-04.
The minister did not say how the deficit of Rs8.88 billion suffered in the current fiscal year would be met and what measures would be taken to meet the indicated deficit of Rs5.43 billion on the revenue side and the financing of the ambitious Rs18 billion ADP.
The budget documents show that out of Rs18 billion ADP, the provincial government will take up projects involving an outlay of Rs12.31 billion while the district and local governments will invest Rs5.65 billion.
On the revenue expenditure side, the provincial government will spend Rs58.89 billion while Rs46.01 billion will be given to the 16 district and the local governments for meeting their obligations.
Syed Sardar Ahmad informed the assembly that the government planned to reduce the debt burden by swapping soft loans with expensive ones. He said that the government had obtained Rs12.6 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank out of which Rs4.16 billion had been utilized retiring loans bearing interest rates from 15.94 per cent to 17.71 per cent.
The minister said that the provincial government had approached the federal government to allow Sindh to secure low-interest loans to adjust the Rs37 billion federal government loans with high interest rates.
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