PESHAWAR, Oct 17: The NWFP government’s liability on account of development works is likely to come down to around Rs30bn as it has reduced the number of development schemes under annual development programme (ADP) for the current financial year, according to well placed official sources.

The planning and development department, NWFP, has recently undertaken the exercise in the name of ‘making ADP’s priorities right’.

The move was undertaken under the pressure of the World Bank, which has linked the release of the second tranche of $90m to NWFP under its structural adjustment credit (SAC) programme during the current financial year with the lowering of the size of the liability by bringing the schemes down from the current level of 1325.

The liability rose to an unprecedented height of Rs47bn from the last financial year’s level of Rs24bn when the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal led NWFP government included about 980 new schemes in its ADP for the 2003-04 financial year.

Official sources told Dawn that the provincial government was trying to bring down the size of the liability to slightly over Rs30bn under its currently pursued exercise to ‘get its priorities right’.

“The P&D department,” said a senior official “has yet to complete the assigned task”.

Official sources said that delay in completing the assigned task might result in further delaying the release of the second tranche.

“Unless the restructured ADP is submitted to the bank in line with its condition, the time frame for the release of the second tranche could not be known,” said the official.

However, the finance managers of the province said the second tranche is not likely to come before the third quarter of the current financial year.

Development planners of the province said that the exercise to restructure the ADP would not result in lowering the size of the ADP which has projected at Rs14.69bn involving over Rs5bn foreign funded component.

“The P & D department is just working on the reduction of the number of development schemes and not the size of the ADP which would remain the same — Rs14.67bn,” said a development planner.

Less significant and non-feasible schemes would be dropped from the ADP to reduce the number of development schemes, said an official involved in the exercise.

Under one of the proposals, said a development planner, the provincial government had been proposed to exclude the Rs6bn Malakand-III hydro power project from the list of schemes to be locally funded.