PESHAWAR: Opposition in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Monday rejected the province’s Rs109 billion supplementary budget for the outgoing financial year unjustified and an additional burden on the ‘impoverished’ province and insisted that the presentation of such a large supplementary budget showed the failure of the government and poor planning of its departments.

The house, which met with Speaker Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani in the chair, began debate on the 2020-21 supplementary budget.

MPA Inayatullah Khan of the opposition Jamaat-i-Islami started the debate on supplementary budget and regretted that major part of the supplementary budget i.e. Rs78 billion was spent on non-development activities.

He urged the government to ensure the early passage of the proposed provincial financial management act, which had been awaiting the assembly’s nod for the last few decades.

Members complain they don’t know where that amount was spent

The lawmaker said in the previous budget session, the finance minister had promised the passage of the proposed financial management law in two months but the promised wasn’t kept later.

“The pending legislation will ensure democratic control on budget. After the proposed law’s passage, the government will be required to get the supplementary budget passed by the house prior to making the expenditure in the relevant sector, he said.

“In the name of re-appropriation, funds are transferred from one department to another and new heads are created,” he said.

MPA Naeema Kishwar of the JUI-F said the government wanted to get Rs109 billion supplementary budget approved by the house though the members didn’t know where such a huge amount had been spent.

She wondered why the government didn’t include those expenses in the annual budget that it spent in different sectors in the middle of the year or at the end of it.

“All this shows the government’s poor planning at the cost of public money,” she said.

The lawmaker said no details had been given of the supplementary budget utilised by the different departments and that the government had been using the house as ‘rubber stamp’.

PML-N member Ikhtiar Wali said the budget documents showed that Rs9 billion had been given to the food department as supplementary grant for subsidy on wheat.

He said the poor people of KP had purchased flour at exorbitant rate, so where the food department spent such a huge amount given to it for subsidy.

Mr Wali asked the government to have mercy on the poor people subjected to unprecedented hike in the prices of essential commodities.

He said if the educational institutions remained closed for almost the entire year due to Covid-19 pandemic, then why both elementary and secondary education and higher education departments required additional budgets.

Referring to Article 124 of the Constitution, ANP MPA Khushdil Khan said the supplementary budget should be spent ‘subject to the law and procedure’ along with proper justification.

“No justification has been shared with the lawmakers about the billions of rupees worth of supplementary budget already spent by the government,” he said.

He said what the government was doing in the name of supplementary budget was actually a sort of irregularity, which it should rectify.

PPP members Ahmed Karim Kundi, Sanaullah, Nighat Orakzai, ANP’s Nisar Mohmand and Shagufta Malik and others also participated in the debate.

Responding to the opposition’s criticism, finance minister Taimur Jhagra informed the house that the government had spent only Rs4.4 billion more than the actual annual budget.

“The actual budget for the outgoing financial year was Rs923 billion, which increased to Rs927 billion after it was revised,” he said, adding that actually, the figure of Rs109 billion was ‘reflected in budget documents due to some technicalities’.

The minister said the government was working on four laws to put the province’s financial affairs on the right track.

“We will start releasing development funds at the beginning of the next financial year,” he said.

The chair adjourned the session until Tuesday (today).

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2021