LAHORE: The federal government has at last given Rs995 million to the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) for the fiscal year 2016-17, though the PSB had requested for Rs1.8 billion.

It has also given Rs200 million to the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) and Rs50 million to the Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) as special grants. Therefore, the total allocation for the sports sector for this fiscal year is Rs1.24 billion.

Interestingly, the government has not given direct grant to any other national sport federation other than PHF and PTF.

After receiving the funds, the PSB executive board approved its budget at a meeting held in Islamabad on Wednesday.

It decided to allocate Rs53.5 million for the other sport federations, other than PHF and PTF, which are about 38 in number.

Another major portion of the grant has been fixed for administration and maintenance of the PSB and its provincial coaching centres, which is about Rs564 million.

The PSB will also be spending over Rs110 million on salaries of its staff and other expenditures in Karachi (Rs34 million), Lahore (Rs29 million), Peshawar (Rs23 million) and Quetta (Rs24 million).

The executive board also allocated Rs133 million for participation in international games and for their preparation. It included the amount of Rs6.9 million spent on this year’s Rio Olympics and Rs13 million spent on the 5th Asian Beach Games, held in Vietnam in September-October.

The remaining amount is to be spent on the following programmes: 4th Islamic Solidarity Games to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from May 12 to 23 next year (Rs10 million), training camps to be set up for international competitions (Rs80 million), phase-wise programme for 2020 Olympics Games preparation (Rs20 million) and Inter-board Sports (Rs3 million).

Published in Dawn December 8th, 2016