ISLAMABAD, Dec 17: The government has taken measures to avoid unnecessary delays in the planning and execution of development projects which is causing an annual loss of $10-12 billion to the economy, says a senior government official.

The official told Dawn here on Saturday that the pattern of proposing and implementing Public Sector Development Programmes (PSDPs) has been modified to remove extraneous delays in undertaking development projects from the next financial year.

Now, he pointed out, only viable development projects would be approved which will end the practice of withdrawing funds from the slow moving projects and putting them into fast moving projects every now and then.

“Our approval process has been speeded up and the backlog of development projects in the previous PSDPs is no more there. This is a very significant development,” the official said, adding that from the next financial year, the government would approve only new development projects.

Previously old projects used to be discussed and added in the new PSDPs. That practice has now been done away with, he said.

“We have started examining the new year’s development projects and this is happening for the first time in the history of Pakistan with a view to remove delays and start and complete the projects well in time in order to stop wastage of funds”, he added.

The official conceded that delays had cost the national exchequer $150 billion in the last 30 years and that now the situation has been changed as the country would no more be facing such a huge loss in future.