PESHAWAR, March 29: The NWFP government utilized less than 5 per cent of Rs2.2 billion earmarked for the education sector under the current Annual Development Programme, sources said.

"The low utilization of development funds by the education sector in the first half of the current fiscal added to the government's predicament as it is facing a daunting task of speeding up the execution of uplift works to help the province fulfil its commitments with donor agencies," said an official source.

The government had allocated a total of Rs2.2 billion for those development projects, of which Rs1.7 billion was meant for primary education and over Rs500 million for higher education.

The primary education sector - falling under the jurisdiction of the schools and literacy department - utilized only 1pc of the total annual allocation during the first six months of the current fiscal. The higher education sector's expenditure stood at about 5pc during the same period.

The situation has left the government in an awkward position in front of donor agencies, particularly the World Bank which is financing the NWFP's three-yearreforms programme.

Sources said that introduction of reforms in the administrative affairs and improvement of services and social sector through enhanced allocation and utilization of development funds formed an integral part of the WB's reforms programme.

Official sources attributed the low expenditure to procedural delays at the planning stage and belated approval of new projects' designs and PC-1s. They said the schools and literacy sector involved more than 400 new development initiatives for the 2003-04 fiscal.

"It was a cumbersome process to get approval for so many schemes from the Departmental Development Working Party," said another official source, adding "at a meeting hardly 10 schemes could be looked into and granted approval".

Similarly, delayed release of funds also hampered execution of projects. Besides, sources said, district governments had also failed to expedite execution of development works leaving a large proportion of funds unspent.

Sources said that the government's move to restructure the ADP to meet a World Bank's precondition for the release of the second tranche also affected the execution schedule.

"New development initiatives could not be launched at an early stage of the new financial year because soon after the start of the 2003-04 financial year, the government was made to rearrange the ADP.

In the process most of the development planners got engaged in revamping the ADP," said a senior development planner. However, planners hope that the situation will improve in the months to come and the latest official figures also reflect signs of recovery.

By the end of the eighth month of the current fiscal, the primary education sector's development expenditure stood at around 9pc, while the higher education sector's expenditure, too, the same percentage mark.

The development expenditure of the entire sector stood at about 8.9pc against the total annual allocation of Rs2.2 billion. While the expenditure against Rs1.6 billion released by the end of the 8th month of the current financial year stood at 12.5pc.

The project executing agencies recorded a total expenditure of Rs200 million in the primary and secondary education sectors by the end of first eight months of the current fiscal, requiring the authorities concerned to utilize Rs2 billion during the remaining four months.

The improvement in the development expenditure has been attributed to the spending spree under the provincial government's Rs286 million project of distributing free textbooks among the students of primary schools.