KARACHI, May 28: Unable to make any significant headway in economic development or in poverty alleviation during the last two years, the federal government has neither made any projection of economic growth nor made any allocation for poverty alleviation in the Rs144 billion Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for next fiscal year.

The Rs144 billion PSDP does not provide any allocation for Karachi Mass Transit Programme, revitalization of Karachi Circular Railway, water supply and upgradation of Keenjhar lake and for the dualization of Karachi-Thatta-Hyderabad highway. There are no funds for the proposed mega projects in Sindh and no allocation has been made for the much-trumpeted Coastal Development Authority.

There are all indications that the federal government has dropped the poverty alleviation programmes, Drought Emergency Relief Assistance (DERA), Khushhal Pakistan and funding social sectors. The cash-strapped provinces, particularly Sindh and Balochistan, will be asked to take up responsibilities of poverty alleviation and drought relief assistance.

For the first time, the bureaucrats in Islamabad have not released the first part of the working paper of PSDP that reviews the current fiscal year’s development efforts in term of achievements, failures and setbacks. It also gives the direction on which the development efforts are set for the coming fiscal year.

There is, therefore, no information available on the progress of the Rs140 billion PSDP for the current fiscal year. The government had originally announced Rs120 billion development outlay for 2001-02 last year. It was later raised to Rs140 billion after the government obtained fiscal space from the generous grants from the US and other countries after September 11 and the relief obtained in debt servicing. The economic growth was projected at four per cent for the current fiscal year. Indications are that growth would be hardly three per cent this year.

The Rs144 billion PSDP for the next fiscal year was approved in the Annual Plan Coordination Committee (APCC) last Friday (May 24) with Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in the chair. The APCC this year was called rather hastily and provinces were given less than 48 hours to do any homework for the meeting in which sectoral and provincial allocations of development funds are made.

Special programmes, which have now ceased to be part of the federal development outlay is the startling fact that second part of the working paper of Rs144 billion PDSP reveals. No allocation has been made for poverty alleviation in the PSDP for next fiscal year. Either the government has decided to drop the poverty alleviation programme half way or is passing on this responsibility to the provinces. The government originally provided Rs10.2 billion. It was later increased to Rs25 billion. How much of these funds have been utilized and the impact it could make on quality of rural and urban life remains unanswered in the document released by the APCC on May 24.

All the four provinces have been given an allocation of Rs48 billion, including foreign aided projects of Rs13 billion. There is however no indication of allocation of each of the provinces.

In Sindh, the officials in planning and development department find it difficult to prepare any blue print for the next fiscal year’s development outlay in the absence of provincial break-up of the Rs48 billion block allocation.

Officials say that the Sindh government was promised an allocation of Rs1.92 billion from Rs6.4 billion drought assistance programme in the current fiscal year. Total release under this programme has been less than 50 per cent of the promised amount. Only a sum of Rs724 million has been given and the Sindh government waits for release of more than Rs1.2 billion as the year comes to an end.

There is also a lurking fear that the National Drainage Programme is being discontinued from the next fiscal year. This will leave the project of taking drain canals up to sea in Sindh incomplete.

In the federal funded programmes for National Highway Authority, Sindh has been given Rs2.79 billion out of total allocation of Rs19.05 billion. It is only 14 per cent. Under the existing formula of resource distribution, Sindh’s share should have been about Rs4 billion.

Therefore, there is no provision for construction of bridge on River Indus in the 2002-03 budget or in the medium term plan up to 2010-2011.