PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa finance minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra on Wednesday said the province was eyeing Rs52 billion revenue collection during the current fiscal.

Addressing the launch of the Actual Revenue and Expenditure Report, 2019-20, the minister said the province’s own revenue had increased considerably over the last three years.

“We have collected around Rs50 billion of revenue during the current year,” he said.

The minister said the province’s own revenue stood at Rs31.8 billion in 2018-19 but jumped to Rs42.3 billion in 2019-20, which was record given the pandemic, which dominated the later half of the year.

Minister Jhagra says province increasing own resources

He said the province was increasing own resources due to the efforts of the KP Revenue Authority.

“The KPRA contributed around Rs17 billion to Rs42 billion,” he said.

The minister said starting with 2018-19, the finance department had started putting the revenue and expenditure report out there for the people.

He said the document not only brought the transparency of the budget figures but at the same time, helped with budget-making process for the next year.

The report showed that the province’s revenue receipts were from far off the mark from those projected in budget document as the province received Rs615.4 billion against budget estimates of Rs900 billion.

However, the report said the impact of Covid-19 was visible in the loss of revenue.

It said in 2018-19, KP received 92 per cent of the budgeted federal transfers and in 2019-20, the receipts dropped to 75 per cent of the budgeted transfers.

“It is difficult to quantify real impact of Covid-19 on provincial economy of the province, but purely going by the loss of federal transfers, it was at least Rs 100 billion,” it said.

The report said the provincial government’s expenditure rose by 22 per cent.

It said the current revenue increased from Rs369 billion to Rs455 billion, which included salary and non-salary expenditure for the merged tribal districts.

The report said under the capital expenditure of the current account, which primarily consisted of loan repayments, also increased from Rs8.7 billion to Rs10.1 billion.

It said during the year, development spending totalled Rs170 billion but 27 sectors failed to spend their allocation, while six spent more than their budgetary allocations.

The report pointed out that while province budget utilisation was consistently high but the capacity for individual projects was very different.

It said certain sectors were above a hindered per cent showing a greater capacity to absorb, while there were other sectors that do not spend so efficiently.

The report said the another pressing concern for the government was throw forward liability, which had grown to over six years that was making adding new projects difficult.

It said the unsustainable trend forced the provincial government to rationalise the ADP by trimming projects.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2021