KARACHI, Feb 16: The Sindh government has shown an extremely low utilization of the development funds during the first half of the current fiscal year that is being attributed to painfully slow release of money by the provincial finance department.

Syed Sardar Ahmad has become a most unpopular finance minister among his cabinet colleagues and members of the Sindh Assembly because, according to a legislator, "the finance minister is holding every rupee in his teeth and not willing to oblige either his party members or the members of the coalition partners."

For Rs18 billion annual development plan of the current fiscal year, the Sindh finance department released the first instalment of funds much after the expiry of July 04 which obviously hampered the pace of implementation of the development schemes. During July to December 04 hardly Rs1.57 billion out of Rs18 billion ADP could be utilized.

Official sources say that the Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has called for a report of the pace of implementation of development programmes from the provinces which would be discussed in the forthcoming half yearly review meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) scheduled to be held late this month.

Officials are carrying with them in the mid term NEC meeting the figures of the development fund utilisation in January and two weeks of February to establish that pace of implementation has picked up in this period because of the timely release of funds. They confirmed that the finance department released funds in the first week of January.

With ineffective account committees in the provincial legislatures and lack of proper monitoring and vigilant inspection, the utilization of development funds is more of a brick and mortar exercise rather than improving the quality of infrastructure facilities in the rural and urban areas.

Afzal Muneef, a development and planning minister in Sindh about 10 years ago from the MQM estimated a minimum of 35 per cent leakages in development funds. The contractors are mostly the front men of the ministers and the members of assemblies who literally squander public money.

In this perspective, the finance department reported release of a little over Rs6 billion during the first half of 04-05 from the Rs18 billion ADP. But the district governments and the provincial departments reported receipt of Rs4.88 billion indicating that the balance amount of Rs1.2 billion is stuck up somewhere in the government files.

The Rs18 billion ADP carries Rs5.65 billion funds for the 16 district governments and Rs12.34 billion for the provincial departments. From the released funds in first half of the current fiscal year, the 16 district governments received Rs2.10 billion and the provincial departments got Rs2.78 billion. From these funds, the districts reported utilization of Rs839.80 million and the provincial departments Rs734.18 million.

This disparity of funds utilization between the district governments and the provincial departments has become a source of political tension in Sindh, which manifest itself in frequent exchange of acrimonious statements among the political leaders.

With local bodies elections round the corner, the political leadership in the province has been left with a task to put to productive utilization of more than Rs11 billion in next six months. The district governments are expected to utilize Rs4 billion plus in next six months.