PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to spend over Rs300 billion for the development of merged tribal districts in the next three years.

The plan, which is part of the three years Accelerated Implementation Programme, was unveiled during a special ceremony at a policy dialogue organised by the provincial government with development partners in Islamabad on Friday.

The dialogue was attended by provincial finance minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra, chief secretary Dr Kazim Niaz, additional chief secretary Shakeel Qadir Khan, representatives of donor agencies, including World Bank, DFID Asian Development Bank and GiZ, and foreign diplomats.

The AIP covers the first three years under the Tribal Decade Strategy (TDS) 2020-30 and comprises 168 projects in 19 sectors for the sustainable development of the merged districts.

The strategy document available with Dawn notes that during the current fiscal, the KP government has mobilised Rs83 billion under for the purpose.

Govt unveils plan in policy dialogue with development partners

“The AIP translates the (TDS) into actionable initiatives over the first three years emerging on the perspective planning horizon,” it said, adding that the development portfolio consists of 168 projects and interventions separately conceived, funded and monitored from the traditional Annual Development Programme (ADP).

The document said keeping a short-term focus, the programme sought to lay the foundations for the sustainable development of the merged areas.

It said the programme was meant to address the lag in development through both a dramatic increase in resources as well as innovative and materially different approaches to development.

In the financial year 2019-20, 48 per cent of the development funds will be spent on education, health, drinking water, sanitation, social welfare and gender, while 21 per cent each will be utilized for institution building and responsive and accountable institutions, eight per cent on creating sustainable economic opportunities and two per cent on sustainable natural resource management.

The document said besides the existing government agencies to carry out development projects, a special authority on the pattern of Infrastructure Development Authority Punjab may also be created for rapid and high quality of implementation of large projects including dams, major hospitals and other such projects.

It noted that the lag in development in the merged areas was a direct manifestation of chronic public underspending over the last seven decades.

The document said the provinces with their meagre own-source revenue derive most of their funds from the fiscal transfers under the National Finance Commission (NFC) awards.

It added that in the last decade, federal transfers had contributed to an average of Rs15,930 per capita per annum public expenditures for Punjab, Rs17,436 in Sindh, Rs19,787 in Balochistan and Rs17,079 per capita in KP, while the average for erstwhile Fata stood at paltry Rs8,205 per capita per annum.

The document said the underfunding of the merged districts was around Rs481 billion over the last decade, while the underspending amounted to Rs3,367 billion since the creation of Pakistan. It added that the residents of region continued to bear a proportionate burden of the indirect taxes that in turn contributed 60 per cent of total national revenue at the federal level.

The document said given the accumulated lag in spending, merged areas had missed almost 50 fiscal outlay or 50 fiscal years of development.

It said the underfunding had resulted into current woes of the region, where currently, 0.45 million children were out of school, falling prey to all kinds of negative persuasions.

The document said the road connectivity despite the difficult geographic terrain remained 0.26km per square kilometre, hampering access to markets and the meagre and maternal mortality at 375 mothers losing lives during childbirth was one of the highest in the world.

Published in Dawn, February 29th, 2020