ISLAMABAD, June 25: The government is likely to set up a task force soon, that would have official and unofficial members, to improve the weak implementation of the projects, which rendered 30 per cent funds undistributed during the outgoing financial year.

Informed sources told Dawn here on Friday that, although the Planning Commission has been entrusted with the job of assuring timely budgetary releases to the provinces, ministries and divisions, the likely setting up of the task force would in fact oversee the whole implementation process.

A senior government official when approached admitted that weak implementation was causing problems which needed to be taken up seriously during 2004-05 so that allocated funds to the concerned ministries and provinces could be disbursed well in time.

He said that Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, in the last couple of meetings, expressed his displeasure over the weak implementation process. The prime minister has been receiving complaints from the national and provincial legislators in this regard.

However, the official said he did not know whether any task force was being set up to largely improve the weak implementation process. "Some people in the private sector might have proposed the establishment of this task force," he said.

He said that the financial advisers of the ministries and divisions and chief accounting officers had been directed to submit quarterly reports to the deputy chairman Planning Commission about the budgetary releases. "If they fail to carry out their functions properly, they would face serious consequences, the official said without elaborating.

There is general agreement that the planning processes have greatly week ended over time even though Five year Plans have formally been in existence throughout most of the past three decades: the Eighth Plan covered the period 1993-98, and the Ninth Plan for 1998-2003, though prepared, was never finalized.

Factors responsible for the decline in the effectiveness of both the planning processes and the planning institutions have varied over time. Pakistan's strong economic record of the 1960s was attributable in part to the strength of its planning processes and the unique role of its planning institutions. Contrary to popular perceptions, it was not the existence of Five-Year Plans as such that was the main contributor to the quality and speed of economic policy adjustments and generally sound resource allocation decisions during the 1960s.

Donor agencies maintained that more important factors were the strong political support to the planning process, the high level of professionalism and independence of groups of planners both at the centre and in the provinces, and the economic policy coordination mechanisms, which, notwithstanding the centrality of the ministry/department of finance, provided a clear role for the planning agencies as well as the sector ministries and departments.