PESHAWAR, May 9: The NWFP government will need to put in extra efforts during the remaining two months of the current financial year to take its over all development expenditure to a respectable level. The government has recorded a total development expenditure of Rs5.5 billion in the first nine months, according to official sources.

For the 2004-05 fiscal, the provincial government had set out a Rs16.2 billion development plan which involved massive funding by foreign donors and the federal government. The development expenditures recorded during the July-March period of the ongoing financial year, however, make only 34 per cent of the total size of the ADP.

The finance department, according to sources, distributed a total of Rs10.5 billion among various project-executing agencies and departments during the first three quarters of the current financial year. A considerable part of this amount, however, remained unspent due to procedural bottlenecks, including delayed preparation of PC-1s of hundreds of new schemes featuring the current ADP.

“It does not seem likely that the province will be able to turn its Rs16.2 billion planning into 100 per cent reality,” said an official of the provincial government.

After Rs5.5 billion development expenditures in first nine months, the project-executing agencies have to spend Rs10.7 billion in the remaining three months of the current fiscal.

“Though achievement of 100 per cent expenditure target is not possible, the government can make considerable improvement to increase over all expenditure level during the last three months by ensuring good governance, which the province is lacking at present,” said a senior finance manager of the province.

NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, according to the sources, is scheduled to preside over a high-level meeting in Peshawar on May 10 to review the progress in terms of the ADP during the first three quarters of the ongoing financial year. Official sources expect that the CM would not be happy with the progress.

The ADP for the current financial year comprises two major segments; Rs8.5 billion local component and Rs5.6 billion foreign loans/aid.

The province disbursed a total of Rs6.6 billion during the first nine months off the local component and Rs1.1 billion off the foreign funded component of the annual development plan. While expenditures under the local component stood at Rs3.5 billion, an amount of Rs1.05 billion was spent under the foreign funded component.

Official sources said hundreds of new development schemes were made part of the current ADP and project-executing agencies and departments were required by the official rules to prepare PC-1s of all new schemes and get approval from the competent forums.

“All of them took too much time in formulating PC-1s due to which physical execution of these development works could not be commenced on time,” said a development planner.

Officials of the planning and development department, when contacted, however, said that the pace of development activities would accelerate during the last quarter when all the departments pay full attention to utilise the funds put at their disposal.