PESHAWAR, March 15: The Fata Secretariat has resized the Rs15 billion Annual Development Programme of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas for the current fiscal to Rs10 billion, shifting the government’s focus to completion of ongoing schemes from start of new ones, according to the relevant officials.

“It was obvious from the beginning of the financial year that Fata would not get Rs15 billion development funds from the federal government but the ADP size was set at a higher side as a political gimmick,” an official told Dawn requesting anonymity.

Under the initially designed ADP, Rs13.1 billion was to come from Fata Secretariat, Rs1.46 billion from Fata Development Authority and Rs476 million from foreign donors.

The official said under the readjustment exercise, financial allocations for new development schemes had been slashed by 70 per cent, while the ongoing projects would get 30 per cent less than the amount reflected at the start of the financial year.

A development planner said the ADP size had been set at Rs15 billion in line with the resource availability assurances given by the Planning Commission.

However, he said, the ADP resizing had become a compulsion since the finance division had allocated Rs10 billion, in the federal government’s budget documents, for Fata development.

“The urgency to readjust ADP had been felt right at the beginning of the financial year after the finance division made it clear that Fata would get what it had been allocated under the federal budget documents,” said a senior official.

In the meantime, the Planning Commission conditionally promised provision of additional funds from the states and frontier regions ministry to the tribal region saying it could happen if Fata Secretariat ensured 100 per cent utilisation of funds (Rs10 billion).

The official said the condition appeared to be an uphill task in view of development expenditure trends and the Peshawar-based authorities’ track record. “Utilising Rs10 billion in a single year is next to possible as the development expenditure has never touched the Rs9 billion mark,” the official said, adding that the funds’ complete utilisation in Fata had become immensely difficult due to delicate security situation.

“Mehsud tribe’s area (in South Waziristan agency) is the worst hit as not a single rupee can be spent on development activities under the given situation,” said the official, adding that development interventions had been at a complete halt for quite some time.

The Fata Secretariat, he said, was working on a strategy to achieve higher utilisation of development funds by releasing more funds to ‘fast track schemes,’ re-appropriating resources from schemes moving slowly.

However, another official said even if the Fata Secretariat achieved higher utilisation of development funds, it could not materialise its desires to get greater financial releases from the federal government.

“The federal government is not even likely to release Rs10 billion for Fata development as reflected in the federal budget for the current financial year,” said the official, adding that it did not have much fiscal space to do so.

He said the government had so far released Rs6 billion for carrying out development work in Fata, while Rs2 billion more was expected to be provided for Fata development in the remaining three months of the fiscal.

“In all, Fata is likely to get Rs8 billion development funds from Islamabad,” said the official, citing shortage of funds with the federal government as a major reason for cut in federal releases.

The cut in financial disbursements and readjustment of the ADP size, said the planner, had affected the governor’s special funds.

An allocation of Rs900 million had been made for carrying out development schemes on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Masood Kausar’s instructions in the originally set Rs15 billion ADP.

The official said the governor would accordingly get far less than the Rs900 million funds and that the emphasis had been shifted to the ongoing portfolio to rationalise the ADP size and reduce future development outlay liability.