LAHORE, Aug 3: The Punjab government expects to finalise negotiations with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a $750 million soft-term loan by early October for the second phase of governance reforms under the five-year Punjab Resource Management Programme (PRMP).

Senior government officials told Dawn on Friday the next phase of governance reforms will cover four areas: civil service reforms, pension reforms, planning and budgeting reforms and private sector reforms (dealing with cost of doing business, capacity building and regulatory issues hindering its growth).

“We are looking forward to a long-term partnership with the ADB for our reforms programme, which aims at achieving our ambitious growth targets for the province,” a Planning and Development Department official said.

In the first phase of the reforms lasting about four years, the Punjab government set up a provincial procurement authority, initiated tax reforms, developed Poverty Focused Investment Strategy (PFIS) and launched Pension Fund.

It also developed a debt management strategy, under which it has retired expensive federal loans with soft-term, low-cost loans obtained from the multilateral donors.

To assess the impact of the first reforms programme (2003-07) undertaken by the province with the financial assistance of $400 million from the ADB and finalise proposals for the next phase, an ADB fact-finding mission visited Lahore from July 17 to 30. The objective of the fact-finding mission visit was to reach general agreement on the objectives, scope and implementation modalities for programme and related technical assistance.

During its visit the mission attended a three-day consultative workshop on medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF), public pension system, private sector development and civil service reforms to elicit views and firm recommendations of the stakeholders on the core areas of reforms that the provincial government intends to undertake in the next reforms programme.

“The main objective of the workshops was to generate ideas and establish concerns for the long-term vision of the Punjab government on the reform areas,” an official said.

The ADB mission also met with senior provincial government officials, including chief secretary Salman Siddique, P&D Board chairman Suleman Ghani, PRMP programme director Asad Sumbal, key line departments’ secretaries and others to firm up their recommendations for the future reforms programme.

The second phase of reforms programme, according to officials, is expected to improve performance-based fiscal planning and budgeting processes and better resource management, make civil service more efficient and effective, form a sustainable off-budget funded pension system and create a greater private sector involvement in the development process.

“The primary objective of all the reforms is to improve in the delivery of public services and sustainable economic growth,” the official said.