30 September 2004	Thursday	14 Shaban 1425

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PESHAWAR, Sept 29: The NWFP government failed to implement its annual development programme (ADP) for the 2003-04 financial year and billions of rupees remained unspent, official sources said.

The government could spend about Rs8.7 billion under the ADP, but failed to meet even its downward revised expenditure target. The recently compiled data of total expenditure against financial disbursements made under the previous financial year's ADP left the provincial government with an unimpressive record when compared with the original size of the development programme.

The government had prepared a Rs14.696 billion ADP for the 2003-04 fiscal year, taking credit for projecting the highest ever development outlay in the history of the NWFP.

However, development planners said, the government failed to make its plan a reality as it could not even spend the amount it had projected under the revised size of the 2003-04 ADP.

In accordance with the revised estimates of ADP's expenditure for the 2003-04 fiscal year, which were tabled in the provincial assembly at the time of presenting the current financial year's budget, the government was to spend Rs12.88 billion by the close of the previous financial year.

"But due to slow execution of development work, particularly during the first two quarters of the last fiscal year, the government could neither materialize its original nor the revised plan," said a development planner.

The Rs8.7 billion development expenditure recorded collectively by the project executing agencies in the last financial year meant that the provincial government to spent Rs5.9 billion less than the actual size of the ADP and Rs4 billion less if compared with the ADP's revised size.

Though the line departments, said the sources, had been released Rs11 billion, they failed to utilize the funds by 100 per cent, because of slow execution of development schemes, delayed approval of the development works' PC-1s particularly schemes pertaining to the education sector.

Official data said that Rs8.77 billion expenditure makes about 60 per cent of the ADP's original size of Rs14.696 billion and 68 per cent of its revised size of Rs12.88 billion.

Out of the total original size, a sum of Rs6.8 billion was to be spent on development schemes that formed the local component of the ADP and a sum of Rs5.39 billion was meant for the works that made part of the foreign funded component of the ADP.

The sources said plans were shattered because of low expenditure recorded under the foreign funded schemes and slow execution of schemes on the part of the district governments.

Against the Rs5.39 billion estimated expenditure under the foreign funded projects, only a sum of Rs1.5 billion could be spent, which left the government to spend Rs3.9 billion less than the actual size of the ADP's foreign funded component.

"Actually, the government could not raise the amount of funds it had projected to get from foreign donor agencies during the 2003-04 financial year," said a source. However, said the source, the funds utilized during the 2003- 04 financial year reflected a substantial improvement on the part of the government agencies when compared with the total development expenditure incurred in the 2002-03 financial year.

In comparison with the 37 per cent utilization of funds against the Rs13.67 billion total size of the 2002-03 financial year's ADP, in the 2003-04 financial year the provincial government's funds utilization ratio stood at 60 per cent.