October 26, 2007	Friday	Shawwal 13, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 25: The annual budget of Rawalpindi district approved by the council in June is marred by several technical flaws and glaringly lacks any coherent and participatory planning.

The budget document provides only a lump sum figure of Rs3.521billions for current expenditures in 2007-08, as compared to Rs3.038 billions allocated in 2006-07. This means that the current expenditures have increased but the budget document provides no details about department-wise allocations.

Resultantly, there is complete silence over whether the increased allocations for current expenditures are truly justified or not.

It is also disturbing to note that the allocation for the development expenditures has been reduced to Rs1.002 billions in 2007-08, as against Rs1.542 billions of revised allocation in 2006-07.

A civil society organisation, the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI), Pakistan, in a report here on Thursday expressed its deep concern over “the inefficient utilisation of tax-payers money” in the Rawalpindi city district and urged the authorities concerned to fully implement Budget Rules 2003 in order to ensure transparency and accountability.

According to the centre, the Rawalpindi city government has consistently failed since 2001 in terms of ensuring implementation of the budget rules. As a result, the budget documents that it has been producing year after year include scant details about revenues and expenditures.

“The most disturbing fact is that the provincial and federal authorities have failed to effectively monitor and address the related problems, despite the fact that the situation involved gross violations of related rules and procedures resulting in huge inefficiencies and wasteful expenditures,” the centre observes.

It says poor performance of the city government is obvious from the current year’s budget. Annual budget of the Rawalpindi district, which was approved by the council in June 2007, includes serious flaws and deviations from the Budget Rules 2003. It does not include any details about the current expenditures and, as a result, it is not possible to find out allocated amounts of non-developmental expenditures of each office or department during 2007-08, and whether the same have gone up or down.

Similarly, the District Council approved 735 new development schemes but without having any prior information about the cost estimates for each of the scheme that was being approved.

“It is, therefore, impossible to determine whether the city government has adequate resources to actually implement, wholly or even partially, the approved schemes,” the centre fears.

Absence of estimates of development schemes from the budget document showed that the city government had failed to do its homework properly before presenting the budget in the Council. It was in total violation of the Budget Rules 2003, which require the city government to complete the planning process by the end of March and present the draft budget in the Council in April.

“It seems that the Rawalpindi city government is again bent upon repeating the same mistakes and violations of budget rules, as it has taken no effective measures to improve its performance,” the centre observes.

It may also be noted that in 2006-07, the city government had set a target of Rs176 millions for “own source receipts”, but it was later drastically revised down to Rs41.4 millions, while the actual receipts were only Rs35.7 millions.

These statistics indicate to the extremely poor performance of district government in terms of raising local revenues and ensuring collection of service charges.

This year’s target for ‘own source receipts’ is Rs136 millions, which seems totally unrealistic in view of the past performance of the district government. And, above all, it seems that no one monitors the performance in terms of revenue receipts on quarterly basis, although the council and its relevant committees must demand such information and disclose it for the purpose of facilitating the process of public accountability.

The centre has urged the members of City District Council to hold open sessions to debate the performance of the city government in terms of its development planning, compliance with budget rules, quality of development expenditures, revenue collection effort and the efficiency of services being provided to the residents.

They must particularly demand maximum transparency in the functioning of city government so that the opportunities for leakages and corruption could be plugged, and the available funds could be efficiently utilised for the improved quality of life for all residents in Rawalpindi.