LAHORE: The Punjab government intends to present eight-month budget of the province on Oct 10 to correct, what it claims, the huge financial wrongs committed by the PML-N government and to give its own financial plan for next year.

The development budget could be from Rs350 to Rs400bn because of paucity of funds as, according to an official, the province was having a negative cash balance.

The caretaker government had given just a four-month provincial budget and budget for the remaining eight months is due next month.

“So far, the decision is to present the eight-month budget for the year 2018-19 on Oct 10. Basically, it would announce corrective measures for the policies by the last PML-government, slashing unnecessary expenditure on unnecessary schemes. We will give our own budget next year,” a senior official told Dawn on Sunday.

The officials said the PTI government would present amendments to the schemes launched by the previous government, removing mistakes and plugging huge holes through which money was wasted. One example was the Sehat Card Scheme of the previous government for which it paid premium of two million people in advance whereas merely 40,000 people availed the facility, an official claimed. Another could be the Safi Pani programme on which billions of rupees were spent with little or no results.

The officials claimed one major step might be additional allocations for south Punjab which used to get peanuts despite announcements in the annual budgets. They said the P&D had thrown forward schemes worth Rs868bn, shrinking and constraining the fiscal space of the PTI government to a great extent. Just in the election year, it bloated the annual development programme (ADP) with an unprecedented number of schemes. Therefore, many economically viable schemes remained either unfunded or underfunded.

“The throw-forward is so huge that even if the government provides all the development funds to the ongoing schemes, they would not be completed in the next three years. The government would complete the Orange Line Metro Train project under directions by the Supreme Court of Pakistan but its cost has been escalated, requiring Rs17bn for it alone,” the officials claimed.

The budget would focus on the PTI’s 100-day agenda, medium priorities, anti-corruption, accountability, performance measurement, austerity policies, regional inequality, south Punjab, resource mobilisation initiatives, economic growth strategy and putting an end to wasteful programmes.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2018