PESHAWAR, Jan 19: The provincial departments have been instructed not to consider new development schemes not covered under the present Annual Development Programme during the current financial year, officials said here on Monday.
The move has been attributed to the government's bids to fulfil World Bank loan agreement's conditionalities, thereby schemes other than those covered under the current ADP would not be undertaken for execution.
The province, said a source, had already chalked out a large development programme for the 2003-04 financial year and its resources did not permit to execute schemes other than those covered under the ADP.
Development schemes, categorised as 'non-ADP schemes' happen to be those which are planned, approved and allocated funds during the course of the financial year following the adoption of the annual provincial budget and the ADP.
Normally, such schemes are allocated funds on the instructions of the chief minister, governor, ministers and elected representatives. However, said the sources, after the provincial government was supposed to fulfil a 'host of conditions' under the World Bank loan agreement, it was not in a position to allocate funds for these schemes.
"There will hardly be around 15 non-ADP schemes, which have been allocated funds for execution," said a senior development planner of the province.Another planner said that even three non-ADP schemes recommended recently by the CM secretariat had not been considered due to the restrictions applied by the planning and development department, NWFP.
"This situation has really dismayed the chief minister, but one can hardly do anything in this regard as the province is required to fulfil its commitments towards the lending agency and manage its meagre resources in a prudent manner," said the source.
The provincial government, added the sources, had recently submitted to the World Bank the details of the number of new and on-going schemes it would finance under its ADP for the 2003-04 financial year.
The current financial year's ADP initially included around 1,175 schemes (comprising around 900 new schemes) to be financed by the provincial government.
However, the provincial government recently carried out a detailed exercise to restructure the ADP to re-prioritise it in an effort to reduce the province's throw-forward liability which, according to sources, had gone close to Rs 50 billion due to the inclusion of around 1175 schemes in the current financial year's Annual Development Programme.
Sources said that the issue of 'not considering the non-ADP schemes during the 2003-04 financial year' was also discussed in detail at a recently held meeting of the heads of the administrative departments.
Secretaries of the administrative departments were told by the province's additional chief secretary that during the current financial year no non-Annual Development Programme scheme should be executed and that priority should be attached to the on-going schemes so far as allocation of funds was concerned.
"Re-appropriation of funds is not possible at this moment of the financial year when full pace execution of the ADP funded schemes has to take place," said the officer.