PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa finance minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra on Thursday said that the province’s share in net hydel profit for the current fiscal would come down from the projected Rs65 billion to Rs56 billion on account of electricity production.

Mr Jhagra told a presser here that the province recently received Rs20 billion NHP payment from the centre.

He said the provincial government had requested the federal government and power industry to share the actual power production data with it and that after rationalisation with the help of data, the province’s projected NHP share had come down by Rs9 billion.

Minister says depts have spent 66pc of uplift funds

The minister said the rationalised amount was likely to be around Rs56 billion and that since power consumption increased in the summer season, the final picture on it would be clear thereafter.

He said the provincial government had thus far released 78 percent of the annual development programme’s funds, while its departments had utilised 66 percent of those funds.

Mr Jhagra said the recent release of NHP payments by the centre had spurred the ADP spending by the province and that it was likely to gain further impetus in the last fiscal.

Regarding development spending in the merged districts, the minister said spending in the region remained somewhat sluggish first due to the interim government and later transition issue but since Jan, it had begun gaining momentum.

He said out of Rs24 billion development program funds, Rs9 billion had been released by the end of Feb, while for third quarter, Rs7.9 billion would be released soon.

Mr Jhagra said a grant of Rs10 billion had been approved for the merged areas’ development programme.

He said the government was trying to streamline the ADP for next year.

The minister said the province had seen little effort for revenue generation in the past but the current government despite facing a hit of Rs6 billion on account of taxes from the telecom sector, the KP Revenue Authority would hopefully surpass the last year’s revenue figures.

“We are planning to increase the province’s annual revenue collection from Rs10 billion to Rs50 billion,” he said.

Additional chief secretary of the planning and development department Dr Shahzad Bangash said the province had so far released Rs119 billion on account of ADP funds and of it, Rs90 billion had been utilised.

He said the utilisation didn’t include the district ADP and foreign funded component of the development programme.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2019