PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa planning and development department has begun releasing funds directly for development projects at district level by doing away with the practice of lump sum disbursement to the deputy commissioners, insisting the move will ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability.

Officials told Dawn that the new funding mechanism would ensure an end to the schemes overlapping as well as ghost projects.

Official documents available with Dawn show that previously, funds for developmental schemes under the District Development Initiatives (DDIs), District Development Plan (DDP), and Accelerated Sustainable Development Initiative (ASDI) were released to districts in a lump sum.

The money was later distributed by the respective deputy commissioner offices for various development schemes and sub-schemes at the district level.

Officials insist initiative will ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability

“In the current financial year, a paradigm shift has been introduced wherein fund releases are made at the sub-scheme level directly by the planning and development department, rather than lump sum releases to districts. This reform has significantly enhanced efficiency, transparency, accountability and development outcomes,” a document read.

It added that under the previous model, funds were released in bulk to districts without scheme-wise segregation, while distribution for projects was carried out at district level.

The document said that data fragmentation existed due to decentralised record keeping and limited visibility at provincial level regarding actual scheme costs, physical progress, and duplication or overlapping of schemes.

According to it, monitoring used to rely heavily on manual reporting. Also, the system was vulnerable to scheme duplication, inclusion of non-priority or unapproved schemes, delays in approvals and execution and limited integration with modern financial and monitoring systems.

The documents said the new disbursement mechanism had ensured funds were released scheme-wise and sub-scheme-wise directly by the planning and development department.

They revealed that in the new system, fund releases would be aligned with approved PC-I or sub-PC-I documents, while financial and physical data would be maintained centrally.

This shift, according to documents, will result in centralisation of data as all scheme-related data will now be centrally maintained, enabling effective oversight at provincial level, and the establishment of a comprehensive data bank for all DDI, DDP and ASDI schemes.

Similarly, it will result in scheme and financial data being uploaded on the PCFMS portal, ensuring real-time financial tracking, improved fiscal discipline and accurate expenditure monitoring.

The documents revealed that the new mechanism was ensuring transparency in scheme costing as bid cost of every scheme would be properly recorded and monitored, prevent cost manipulation and ensure realistic budgeting.

Also, the new system has put an end to scheme duplication as central scrutiny ensures no duplication of schemes across districts or sectors.

The documents said the initiative had ensured timely approval of sub-schemes, prevention of fake and unapproved schemes, cost saving and better utilisation of development funds.

They revealed that during the current year, the introduction of the system had resulted in a clear audit trail of funds, scheme-wise financial visibility, real-time monitoring and reporting and accountability at both district and provincial levels.

When contacted, chief of the Rural Development Section at the planning and development department Hamid Naveed said that Rs5 billion had been released in the last two months through the newly-introduced mechanism, while another Rs10 billion would be disbursed in the next couple of days.

“Our target is to release Rs65 billion in the current financial year, subject to availability of funds, through this system,” he said.

The official said in order to avoid project duplication and ghost schemes, a digitised system

had been introduced at the planning department having minute details of the development schemes of the communication and works, public health engineering, irrigation and local government departments.

He said the funds would not be released to development schemes that weren’t reflected at the main data centre of the planning and development department.

Mr Naveed said that prior to the release of funds, the work done on the project would be monitored through GIS coordinates and physical monitoring.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2025