PESHAWAR: The federal government is dragging its feet on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s offer to provide Rs4 billion bridge financing for the much-delayed Peshawar Northern Bypass project and has informed the province that the 30km road initiative can’t be completed by June 30 this year.

Envisaged to complete the Ring Road around the provincial capital,the Northern Bypass has got stuck in the slow lane due to dripping releases from the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) and other issues during the last 17 years.

Last year, the KP government offered the federal government to arrange bridge financing for the project in order to complete the project by June 30.

KP finance minister Muzzammil Aslam told Dawn that the provincial government’s representatives met officials of the National Highway Authority (NHA) and Prime Minister’s Inspection Team on Monday to discuss the issue but were informed that the Northern Bypass project couldn’t be completed by June 30, as it was not among 16 priority projects the Centre had asked them to successfully execute by the end of the current fiscal.

Says 30km road project can’t be completed by end of next June

He added that federal officials also revealed that the project could be completed by next September.

Aslam said that the KP team pointed out they had got the chief minister’s approval for bridge financing of Rs4 billion through bank guarantees for the completion of the project on time but despite that, the Centre was “dragging its feet” on the crucial project.

“We have conveyed to the Centre that treating the province in this manner is unacceptable,” he said.

The minister said on one hand, the federal departments were complaining about the shortage of funds and the fund squeeze on the Public Sector Development Programme but on other, they’re delaying the bridge financing deal with KP.

He said that at the end of the tense meeting, the federal officials told them to approach high-ups on the issue and even they sought one day’s time to arrange another meeting with the chief of the PM’s Inspection Team.

The project, which is currently in its 17th year of execution, has seen its cost balloon from Rs3 billion to Rs27 billion due to small releases from the federal government.

The documents available with Dawn show that the project launched in November 2010 has seen three PC-I revisions and missed several deadlines.

Package I of the project, measuring 7.6km from motorway interchange to Charsadda Road, was originally scheduled to be completed in 2011. However, the deadline was later revised to 2014.

Over 12km Package II runs from Charsadda Road to Mulazai Chowk. Work on it started in 2015 and was scheduled to complete in 2012. However, it was revised to Dec 31, 2025. This phase has so far seen completion of 64pc work.

Similarly, work on the 5.1km Package 3A, which runs from Mulazai Chowk to Nasir Bagh Road, has been going on since 2013. It was scheduled to be completed in 2014.However, it was later revised to Dec 31, 2025. A total of 86.5pc of work has been completed in this phase.

Work on Package 3B, which is 5.47km long from Nasir Bagh to Takhta Baig checkpost in Khyber district, was launched in Dec 2023 with the scheduled to open in June this year.However, the project deadline was revised to Feb 2026.

The project PC-I, according to documents available with Dawn, was originally conceived with a cost tag of Rs3.07 billion. In the second PC-I revision, the cost was jacked up to Rs9 billion, Rs21.3 billion in the second revision and Rs27.05 billion in third revision.

The documents pointed out that the project, which was in its closing stages, had a PSDP allocation of Rs500 million for the current fiscal against the requirement of Rs4.27 billion.

They highlighted the importance of revising the PSDP allocation for the current fiscal to Rs5.3 billion, including Rs4.27 billion actual estimate and Rs1.1 billion for cost escalation.

The project, according to documents, requires Rs0.37 billion in the first quarter, Rs2 billion in the second and third and Rs1 billion in the fourth quarter.

In 2013, then Peshawar High Court chief justice, Dost Mohammad Khan, took a suo motu notice of the delay in the project’s completion.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2026