ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar said on Saturday that the next Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) will contain practical and realistic development targets which could be achieved in the given timeframe.

Chairing a meeting to review PSDP for 2019-20, the planning minister said the present government is committed to uplift marginalised areas of the country to bring it at par with other developed regions. The less developed parts will be given priority in the next development programme, he said.

Various projects related to Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh, KhyberPakhtunkwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan were deliberated upon during the meeting.

Bakhtyar said the government’s development programme will be based on factual position given the fiscal space and the state of country’s economy. He said the government is making all out efforts to achieve economic turnaround to put the economy on growth trajectory.

The minister said the government had rationalised the current year’s PSDP after realising the unsustainability of the benchmarks set earlier.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2019