04 October 2004	Monday	18 Shaban 1425

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 3: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has convened separate meetings with senior bureaucrats and his cabinet colleagues on Oct 6 and 8, to finalize a broad-based strategy for the functioning of government.

Official sources told Dawn on Sunday that the prime minister would speak to senior bureaucrats (grades BS-21 & 22) on his vision for the country, priorities of his government and governance issues.

As a matter of tradition, every chief executive of the country speaks to senior government officials to set the tone for government functioning and seeks their cooperation and support for the implementation of government policies and priorities.

On Oct 8, the prime minister would hold a meeting with federal ministers and ministers of state to brief them on the future course of action and discuss with them some of the targets he wanted to achieve in his three-year tenure as prime minister.

These sources said the prime minister would also discuss with cabinet colleagues the targets submitted by their ministries and divisions recently. "The prime minister would ask the bureaucracy and cabinet members to deliver results instead of merely showing themselves as busy," a senior official said.

The prime minister had directed all the federal ministers, ministers of state and federal secretaries early last month to submit their six-point priority goals along with their proposed implementation deadlines.

The prime minister has been telling his ministers to work with full dedication and set time-bound targets for achieving results. The sources said the prime minister would hold quarterly meetings with ministers and senior officials to examine the implementation status and approve targets for the next quarter.

The official said the purpose of this exercise was to remove red tape from the functioning of government, introduce good governance and make full and effective use of the public sector development programme for reducing poverty and increasing employment opportunities through broad-based development.

He said the government had already directed all the ministries and divisions to exhaust 25 per cent of the development budget by Sept 30, 2004, to ensure maximum budget utilization during the current fiscal year.

The Finance Ministry officials claimed 25 per cent of the total allocation had been released to the ministries as per government's directive although the actual utilization might be on the lower side due to start-up problems.

All the ministries and divisions have also been authorized to incur 40 per cent expenditure of their current budgets during the first half (July 1-December 31) of current fiscal year.

The government has been under criticism for low utilization of development funds during first two to three quarters of each fiscal year that later results in bulk releases in the fourth quarter. This practice compromised the quality of funding utilization.

The government faces questions every now and then that there was no use for announcing higher allocations for development when real utilization remains usually low.