March, 15 2005	Tuesday	04 Safar 1426

PESHAWAR, March 14: The NWFP government has undertaken a project to change its budgeting method by adopting a new system under which budgetary needs of public sector departments and organizations would be determined on the basis of their performance.

Speakers at a daylong workshop, organized jointly here on Monday by the NWFP finance department and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), said that there was a growing need for switching over from the current ‘incremental’ budgeting system to one of performance-based. This, they said, would enhance government departments’ efficiency and effectiveness, make their functioning transparent and hold them accountable.

Initially, the system is to be changed in districts Kohat and Peshawar as a pilot project, Saifur Rehman Usmani, the project director, told the workshop.

He said that the new system would be practised in the two districts during the current financial year and, based on its results, their budgets for the next fiscal year would be prepared.

He said that at present a major chunk of the provincial government’s financial resources were eaten up by the salary and non-salary heads forming part of the non-developmental expenditure.

He said that the new system would determine expenditure requirements of public sector departments and organizations on the basis of their performance.

Similarly, he said, the government ne