Attractive PSDP envisaged for election year: Planners meeting tomorrow
By Sabihuddin Ghausi
KARACHI, May 19: Being an election year, the year 2007-08 is proving a real hard test for the bureaucrats and planners, who are working overtime to prepare what an official source said ”an attractive but viable” development programme and are proposing public sector investment that ranges from Rs420 billion to Rs578 billion.
But, at the same time the officials say efforts are on to seek a consensus of the top officials of the federal ministries and provincial governments on a minimum size public sector development programme (PSDP) of Rs479 billion that would maintain growth tempo stipulated in the Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) and also help in achieving the targets being proposed
by the president and the prime minister.
The government wants to achieve a growth of 7.5 per cent to 8 per cent in 2007-08.
In a setting when inflation is hitting hard the poor people and the World Bank in its recent report said that 17 per cent population in Pakistan lives on less than a dollar a day income and 74 per cent population on less than two dollars a day, the president and the prime minister have both promised a lot of relief and subsidies on food prices.
An initial development framework for next fiscal year will be given some shape in a two-day meeting of the Annual Planning Coordination Committee (APCC) on Monday and Tuesday. Top bureaucrats and planners of the federal and provincial governments are meeting in Islamabad to discuss Rs479 billion public sector development programme (PSDP) for the next fiscal year.
The two-day deliberations of the federal and provincial bureaucrats and planners being chaired by the Deputy Chairman Planning Commission will finalise a draft of the development outlay. The National Economic Council, the supreme decision-making body of the country, in which political leadership from the federal and provincial governments also participate, will put a final seal of approval on 2007-08 development programme to make it a programme for the next budget that will be tabled in the National Assembly sometimes in the second week of June.
According to the sources the federal and provincial agencies involved in implementation of development programmes sought Rs578 billion, of which Rs511 billion is to come as local resource and Rs67 billion foreign funding. But the Planning Commission, after pruning and a hard look proposed development investment of Rs361 billion indicating Rs308 billion local resources and Rs53 billion foreign funding.
But a priorities committee of the officials and planners that mainly focuses on quick completion of on-going projects and check a thin distribution of resources proposed Rs420 billion development outlays that include Rs270 billion federal programme and Rs150 billion provincial development programmes.
“The proposed size of PSDP 2007-08 is even less than the current year’s (2006-07) PSDP in real terms and on current prices,” an official document observes and, therefore, suggests a minimum size of Rs479 billion to maintain a PSDP ratio with GDP at 4.7 per cent. In Rs479 billion development outlays for 2007-08 the size of federal programme has been proposed at Rs329 billion and that of provinces at Rs150 billion.
But in the summary of the PSDP 2007-08 the distribution of Rs270 billion federal programme remains the same as that of the current fiscal year. The federal ministries are being given Rs170 billion as given in 2006-07, Rs18 billion for Special Areas, Rs34 billion special programmes and Rs48 billion for corporations.
The provincial development outlay for next year is stipulated at Rs150 billion as against Rs115 billion in the current fiscal year.
The next year’s development focuses on infra structure development with allocation of Rs133 billion followed by Rs59.5 billion for water resources, transport and communications, Rs40.6 billion, energy Rs32.1 billion, Rs130 billion for social sector and poverty alleviation.
In the current fiscal year, the government invested 60 per cent of the proposed development funds amounting to Rs150 billion in first nine months. The pace of development investment has improved to 60 per cent in the current fiscal year than 50 per cent but the planning department in its official document blames finance division of slowing down the releases.
