PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa adviser to chief minister on finance Muzzammil Aslam said Thursday the provincial government was working to bring down subsidy for the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit from Rs6 billion to Rs3 billion.

“We want to save Rs2 billion by curtailing expenditure and Rs1 billion by increasing bus fare by Rs5-Rs10,” Mr Aslam told reporters at the finance department here.

He said if the bus service was privatised, then the fare would jump to Rs80 per person.

The aide to the CM said the provincial government has taken up the province’s financial issues with the federal government.

Aslam claims KP has ‘really good’ balance sheet

“We have written seven to eight letters to the federal government about 12 of our issues with it and will continue raising our voice for our rights,” he said.

Mr Aslam said the efforts of the provincial government had increased the province’s share in oil and gas royalty from Rs12 billion to Rs14 billion.

“After the reconciliation of books, our share of oil and gas royalty has gone up by Rs2 billion. The province is likely to receive the amount next month,” he said.

The CM’s adviser said that the government’s three-pronged strategy was revenue increase, expenditure reduction, and resource mobilisation.

He said the province was mulling over setting up a mine and mineral company.

“Our government will have 30 per cent share of the leases. We can earn up to Rs7 billion from the mineral sector per annum,” he said.

Mr Aslam also said that the province was also striving to strengthen its Oil and Gas Development Company.

He also said that the province’s forest potential stood at around Rs200 billion.

“We have the same forest cover as Austria’s,” he said, adding that the province’s forest cover has gone up to 26 per cent due to interventions like the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation programme.

The aide to the CM said that the province’s forestry sector had the potential to generate Rs200 billion in revenues through scientific forest management.

He said that the reports about the province’s being overburdened with the debt were overplayed as its debt-to-GDP ratio was around seven per cent.

Mr Aslam said that currently, the province’s liabilities stood at about $2.3 billion, while its GDP had been estimated to be around $35 billion.

He added that major chunks of foreign remittances totalling about $12 billion were destined for the province. “We have a really good balance sheet,” he said.

The CM’s adviser He said that international partners at the recent donors conference in the provincial capital made pledges amounting to $1.8 billion, which was a huge success for the provincial government.

Mr Aslam said the KP government would purchase 300,000 tonnes of wheat from open market at a cost of Rs28 billion.

He added that the government had also released over Rs7.5 billion for the Sehat Card Plus scheme in the last few weeks.

The CM’s adviser said that the provincial government provided people with subsidies on essential goods last Ramazan on the basis of the data from the Benazir Income Support Programme but didn’t publicise it.

He said that the government was committed to revenue generation.

Mr Aslam said the province wanted to reduce its share of property taxes from six per cent to three per cent.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2024