PESHAWAR, June 19: The NWFP government has unveiled Rs20.98 billion annual development programme (ADP) for 2005-06 with heavy reliance on funds to be provided by international lending agencies and surplus on revenue account based on the federal government’s promise of providing extra budgetary support.
The provincial Minister for Finance, Planning and Development, Sirajul Haq, tabled the new financial year’s development outlay before the NWFP assembly in its budget session on Sunday.
According to the provincial government’s medium-term budgetary framework (MTBF), which indicates provincial GDP growth figures for five years starting from 2005-06, development expenditure in the new fiscal year starting on July 1 accounts for 2.3 per cent of the provincial GDP whose size has been shown as Rs687 billion.
While the provincial government claims to have achieved Rs7 billion surplus on revenue account which, it says, would be diverted to finance major parts of the provincially-funded component of the ADP, the MTBF indicates that the government would face a net fiscal deficit of 0.6 per cent during the new fiscal year for which it would need to get overdraft from the State Bank or seek additional grant from the federal government.
Of the Rs20.98 billion development outlay, the provincially-funded component is of the size of Rs11.2 billion, requiring the government to arrange funds on its own.
The size of foreign-funded component has been calculated at Rs6.85 billion of which an amount of Rs5.98 billion would be provided by the government’s bilateral and multilateral donors as loans and the remaining Rs856.1 million would come as grants.
A sum of Rs963.393 million has been set aside for the district development programme which would be distributed among the 24 districts of the province on the basis of a resource distribution formula hammered out under the provincial finance commission (PFC) award taking effect from 2005-06 for a three-year period.
The provincial cabinet, in its meeting held on Sunday with NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani in the chair, approved the PFC award which entails certain changes in the resource distribution formula when compared with the previous award.
An amount of Rs1.5 billion has been projected to be coming from the federal government for special programmes with a major chunk of Rs651 million going to the DERA programme, Rs113 million to the devolution transition fund and Rs610 million to the access to justice programme.
In addition to this, a sum of Rs479 million has been envisaged for the federally-funded population welfare project.
The ADP includes a total of 985 development schemes — 788 ongoing and 197 new schemes.
The sector-wise allocation of development funds is as follows:
School and literacy to get Rs2.295 billion, higher education Rs765 million, health Rs1.224 billion, water supply and sanitation Rs224 million, social welfare Rs35 million, auqaf and minorities Rs22 million, roads Rs1.377 billion, building and housing Rs255 million, urban development Rs85 million, irrigation Rs687 million, agriculture Rs175 million, forest Rs153 million, environment Rs15 million, tourism Rs70 million, hydel power Rs249 million, industries and minerals Rs1.957 million, regional development Rs1.957 million, research and development Rs33 million and science and information technology Rs55 million.
An amount of Rs1.24 billion would be distributed among the 124 members of the provincial assembly at the rate of Rs10 million per MPA during the next financial year, under the Tameer-i-Sarhad Programme. The money would be spent by the MPAs in their constituencies on development projects to be identified by them.
Talking about the salient features of the ADP, the finance minister said that an education city would be established in Peshawar where 25,000 students would get education up to intermediate free of charge, 198 new primary schools would be established, boundary walls of 1750 existing schools would be constructed, water supply would be ensured for 1725 schools, 12000 adult literacy centres would be established, 12 teacher resource centres would be established, and eight new degree colleges would be set up.
Presenting the revised estimates of the ADP for 2004-05, Mr Haq claimed that Rs15.36 billion had been utilized as against the original outlay of Rs16.2 billion.