KARACHI: The Sindh government has allocated Rs8.5 billion for road infrastructure development, which is 6.59 per cent less compared to Rs9.1bn earmarked for the outgoing fiscal year.

There are a total of 602 schemes pertaining to roads. An amount of Rs6,613m has been allocated for 536 ongoing schemes and Rs1,929m for 66 new schemes.

Around Rs1.21bn has been allocated for foreign funded projects of the roads sector, which includes construction of Nawabshah-Sanghar Road (Rs1bn) and Japan-assisted Rural Roads Construction Project (Rs211.5m).

Elaborating future projects, Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that six roads having cumulative length of 328km, with the technical assistance of $200 million from Asian Development Bank (ADB), would be rehabilitated during the upcoming fiscal year.

During 2014-15, he said around 920.15kms of roads were constructed in flood-affected districts under flood emergency reconstruction project at a total cost of Rs12.569bn (90pc funded by ADB and 10pc by the government of Sindh).”

Agriculture: Of the total 31 agriculture schemes, there are 20 ongoing and 11 new schemes for which an allocation of Rs4.5bn has been made.

A sum of Rs345m has been allocated for six agriculture research schemes; Rs376m for 11 agriculture extension schemes; Rs80m for one agriculture, supply and prices scheme; Rs2,699m for eight mechanisation and Rs998m for five water management schemes.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2015

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