PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government continues its reliance on foreign assistance in its Annual Development Programme (ADP) for fiscal year 2014-15 as it has projected Rs39.75 billion as foreign assistance, which is 28 per cent of its 139.80 billion proposed ADP.

The foreign assistance component mentioned in the white paper for the next fiscal includes Rs31.49 billion grant and Rs8.27 billion as loan. The provincial component in the proposed ADP is Rs100.05 billion, which is 71.5 per cent of the total ADP.

In the current provincial budget 2013-14 the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led coalition government, which often talks of reducing dependency on foreign aid, had projected the foreign assistance of Rs35 billion, which was 30 per cent of then Rs118 billion ADP. However, revised estimates of the current fiscal year showed that the provincial government received total foreign projects assistance of Rs21.06 billion, which is 20 per cent of the revised total development expenditure of Rs104.84 billion.

The proposed foreign assistance will be allocated for 75 projects in 16 sectors. According to the white paper 2014-15, the major chunk of foreign assistance of Rs11.79 billion (30 per cent of the foreign assistance) will go to 29 projects of the elementary and secondary education in the next fiscal year. Similarly, foreign aid of Rs7.68 billion (19 per cent) will be spent on five projects of road construction, whereas Rs4.73 billion (12 per cent) is projected to be spent on 10 projects of regional developments.

Furthermore, seven projects of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home department will receive foreign assistance of Rs3.61 billion (nine per cent); Rs2.93 billion (7.3 percent) is projected for uitilisation in six projects of health department; and Rs2.61 billion (seven per cent) in energy and power sector. Other sectors, which will receive foreign assistance include agriculture, finance, forestry, industries, law and justice, research and development, social welfare, sports and tourism, and urban development.

The white paper projects the DFID (Department for International Development) and EU as major donors as they will be spending Rs11.53 billion. The DFID and EU will also separately utilise Rs1.56 billion and Rs2.28 billion, respectively.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2014