ISLAMABAD, Oct 12: The government has expedited the pace of expenditure for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) under its election strategy, with first quarter disbursements standing at about Rs61 billion, or 26 per cent, of the annual target, violating its own laid down limit of 20 per cent.

According to a statement issued by the Planning Commission, total disbursement amounted to Rs65 billion as of Oct 12, up from Rs61 billion on Sept 30.

The first quarter disbursement for PSDP during the current fiscal year is over 50 per cent higher than same period of last year when releases stood at Rs40 billion.

Under approved and notified criteria for PSDP releases, the commission has set a limit of 20 per cent expenditure for development schemes in the first and second quarter of any fiscal year.

The procedure required the government to release 25 per cent of the total PSDP allocation and 35 per cent in the last quarter of the fiscal year.

The criteria was put in place after consultations keeping in mind past experiences given the fact that most development projects took time in start up stages and required more money in subsequent quarters for their completion.

“It is ironic that the government in general and the planning commission in particular are violating their own policies and spending parameters. If you think more funds are required in early parts of the year, you need to change the rules instead of violating existing rules,” said a senior official of the commission.

The commission said on Friday that it had released a total of Rs64.7 billion as of Oct 12, including Rs36.2 billion for infrastructure-related projects, Rs26.9 billion for social sector projects and about Rs1.6 billion for other schemes.

The commission is responsible for monitoring and disbursement of Rs233 billion out of the federal PSDP.

Another Rs27 billion worth of special projects, commonly known as People’s Works Programme, are separately being looked after by the cabinet division. The division is also responsible for disbursements under such special projects, mostly on the directives of the prime minister’s secretariat.

A commission official said that political expediency was now dictating disbursement of funds for development schemes.

He said the entire federal PSDP allocation of Rs360 billion would stand consumed by the third quarter of the fiscal year for the first time in the country’s history.

He said such haste in utilisation of development schemes may, in most of the cases, compromise the quality of spending because the government representatives and contractors could tend to use substantial part of schemes for financing election campaign.

In some cases, funds allocated for the entire fiscal year were also released in one go instead of following a four-staged disbursement schedule. In a few cases, the projects that were not part of the PSDP were approved in haste and funds released upfront, even before completing mandatory scrutiny and approval process.

For example, three projects having total cost of Rs7.6 billion in the constituency of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf were not part of the PSDP approved by the then prime minister Gilani and four chief ministers as part of the federal budget in June.

These were cleared last month at a hurriedly called meeting of the central development working party and are yet to be approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).

The three projects required Rs4.1 billion during the current year and the entire amount has been released upfront in the first quarter of the fiscal year.

DIVERSION OF FUNDS:

The increased spending for development projects was at the cost of some crucial projects of public importance in health and education sectors as well as human rights.

For example, no money was released in the first quarter for eight public health projects for which Rs12.9 billion had been allocated for the current year.

These projects were intended to control hepatitis, TB, malaria, blindness, influenza and polio.

Likewise, no funds were released for human rights division for which an amount of Rs125 million was allocated under the PSDP 2012-13. Over Rs2 billion allocated for different infrastructure-related schemes in Sindh, mostly in Lyari (Karachi), Hyderabad and Badin region also could not get any funding in the first quarter.

On top of that some of the projects aimed at bringing the Baloch into the mainstream have been ignored as the government did not release even a single penny for Rs1.7 billion worth of Dera Bugti and Kohlu packages.

The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) which was allocated Rs10 billion for reconstruction in Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was given only Rs800 million in the first quarter.

The funds have also been diverted from Multan, the hometown of former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.