ISLAMABAD, April 23: The finance ministry has expressed its inability to fund Rs2.5 billion Karachi to Badin highway project under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2004-05 , Dawn has learnt through reliable sources in the National Highway Authority.

The sources said the finance ministry had asked the NHA to construct the highway through its own resources or ask the Sindh government to co-finance the project with the NHA.

The 500-km Karachi-Gharo-Shah Bandar-Badin project was originally part of the Gwadar port development project. Much of the Thar Coal development project depended on this road project.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf had announced some time ago that the federal government would provide the required funding for the project and the NHA would construct it and hand it over to the Sindh government for operations and maintenance.

The sources said when the NHA took up the project with the federal finance ministry for inclusion in the next year's PSDP, the ministry refused to entertain the request. PC-I of the project is not yet complete.

The NHA is of the view that it had no such budget provision to take up such a big project from its own resources. It said the NHA did not have resources even to meet the maintenance cost of national highways.

This is the second Sindh-specific big project for which the President had announced the federal government's funding but the finance ministry has refused to provide the required funding.

The President had earlier announced a Rs10 billion development package for Hyderabad. The finance ministry has no intentions to fund this package also, at least in the next year. The sources said that about Rs1 billion had been allocated in this year's PSDP for the Thar coal project but only Rs100 million had so far been released.