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Punjab slashes development budget by more than half

Kabira

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LAHORE: The Punjab government on Tuesday unveiled Rs238 billion Annual Development Programme (ADP) for 2018-19, which is 62.51 per cent down from Rs635bn set by the previous government for preceding fiscal year.

Explaining this massive decline, Finance Minister Hashim Jawan Bakht said “poor policies and financial irregularities of the previous government made inevitable slashing down of the development outlay".

The incumbent government’s allocation is markedly less than the previous government’s first year (2013-14) allocation of Rs290bn for ADP. In fact, throughout its five-year term, the former government increased its development allocation by 15pc per annum.

In tandem with the trend during last two years, ADP’s contribution remains concentrated in the social sector as 39pc of total allocation or Rs93.6bn goes to education, health, water supply and sanitation, social welfare, women development, and local government and community development for the remaining eight months of current fiscal year.

In addition to that, 28pc or Rs66bn has been earmarked by infrastructure development followed by services with 17pc or Rs39.3bn. Production sectors like agriculture, food, livestock, industries and tourism were allotted 8pc share or Rs19.7bn.

The ADP document ensures allocation to major initiatives including Rs5bn to expand Health Insurance Programme across the province, Rs5bn for Insaf programme for rural water supply and sanitation, Rs12bn for mother, child healthcare and nutrition and Rs1.5bn to revamp 25 district and 100 tehsil headquarters hospitals and upgradation of teaching hospitals.

Furthermore, Rs177 million has been set aside to construct buildings for 90 shelterless schools and Rs900mn to reconstruct 700 dilapidated school buildings and Rs1.1bn for 44 degree colleges.

The budget also set aside Rs433mn to provide skill training to 550,000 youth and Rs4.4bn funds to buy land for special economic zone in Faisalabad.

Afforestation of blank areas in irrigated plantations for combating smog and an umbrella programme for uplifting road network and connectivity are other hallmarks of the ADP.

The ADP also includes at least 26 foreign-funded projects finance by The World Bank. The cost and projects include $300mn for education sector reforms, $130mn for farm productivity improvement, $100mn for jobs and competitiveness plan, $50mn for tourism & heritage growth, $30mn for improving farm market, $200mn for green development and $200m for Punjab cities programme.

The Asian Development Bank is funding intermediate cities improvement, Jalalpur Canal, flood emergency, Trimmu & Punjnad barrages rehabilitation projects and enhancing public private partnerships.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2018
 
Think about that, punjab development budget for current year is less then dharti per bhoj Sindh and KP. Province of 110m and 65% of Pakistan GDP is being ruined by PTI.
 
Think about that, punjab development budget for current year is less then dharti per bhoj Sindh and KP. Province of 110m and 65% of Pakistan GDP is being ruined by PTI.

Time will tell.

Expenditure:

Rs305.6 billion or 24% for service delivery expenditures.

Rs313.4 billion or 25% for salary expenditures

Rs207.6 billion or 16% for payment of pensions

Rs437.9 billion or 35% for provincial finance commission

The minister highlighted that the government has earmarked Rs373 billion for education, which is Rs28 billion higher from the previous fiscal year. Last year, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government has allocated merely 8% of its ADP for the health sector, while his government has allocated 14% or Rs258.1 of its development budget for healthcare.

He underlined that the PTI government has reformative and people focused agenda. The government has prepared the provincial budget and formulate its development strategy by focusing on health, education, housing and employment to increase support and facilitation for people living under the poverty line.

Highlighting the salient features of the provincial budget, Bakht said the government was launching economic package for farmers, young entrepreneurs and investors. The government is going to introduce easy credit scheme for farmers through the one-window facility.

For the fiscal year 2017-18, he highlighted, the PML-N government had announced Rs635 billion ADP but it hardly spent Rs411 billion on developments. Nearly one-third of the development budget was in papers only.

In budget documents, the government has highlighted that for the past many years, Punjab followed an infrastructure-led growth and development paradigm with a provincialized model of development planning. The new government intends to follow a new paradigm for growth and development which relies on human development and empowerment of local governments as the engines of sustainable growth and development.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/182757...-trillion-budget-punjab-assembly-amid-uproar/

If that's all DAWN published regarding the budget then it shows their extremely biased reporting and refusal to give context. Even if they did publish rest of the details, it doesn't make sense to open a whole new thread/post with that title and to end up giving only a one liner context implying that the current Government has no context or reason.
 
Think about that, punjab development budget for current year is less then dharti per bhoj Sindh and KP. Province of 110m and 65% of Pakistan GDP is being ruined by PTI.
Not ruined...People have voted for PTI ...Punjab is still in better shape then Sindh by any means i.e health, education and etc
 
When you create doplin, elephant forces, it costs money to maintain them hence why development budget is cut.


Over 4.6 lac employees were regularized to buy votes but it will have long term effect on the expenditure. The punjab goverment has to look more PPP options for infrastructure projects
 
That will have some massive short term repercussions!!
What the government needs to do now is to make sure they get the maximum of whatever funds the go on to allocate. Strictky check kick-backs and corruption in any development projects. Around 50% of that fund was going to waste via corruption anyway so the negative effect will be visible only if gov. fails to plug that hole. If they do, there wont be much difference. Also they need gov. machinery much more efficient. For example, from my way to office from home there is this small bridge on a canal that is broken since around 2 months now and NO AUTHORITY have bothered to check and address the problem. It wont take much money but it sure do takes some effort. Lack of money is understandable but lack of effort reflect badly on authorities. That bridge should be fixed. And yeah, its the main road going out of Faisalabad, a highway really. Ignoring this is really bad.
 
Think about that, punjab development budget for current year is less then dharti per bhoj Sindh and KP. Province of 110m and 65% of Pakistan GDP is being ruined by PTI.

It's better to spend as per sources instead of bank corrupting the province by borrowing money and looting it in name of development.
 
I think it is essential that the same level of austerity and drive against corruption is observed in other provinces as well. If people in Punjab see nothing happening in Sindh with regards to accountability, they will be extremely demoralized. It is unfortunate that the cases of Nawaz and Shahbaz have become highlights while Zardari and Faryal are nowhere to be seen. PTI needs to manage the optics here.
 
20-30% of the budget was eaten up by corruption so no real change. This time education and health gets attention.
 
what does this even mean.
It means they can have development budget less then even balochistan (as you have mentioned KP and Sindh) ...They have mandate to rule the province..Ruined it or whatever people have decided .I don't understand your view how have they ruined it...In fact they should have scrapped this kachra Pindi metro, Lahore train and stopped the work in Multan ..People of Pindi, lahore , gujranwala already have too much development budget in previous years..All resources should now diverted to South Punjab
 
It means they can have development budget less then even balochistan (as you have mentioned KP and Sindh) ...They have mandate to rule the province..Ruined it or whatever people have decided .I don't understand your view how have they ruined it...In fact they should have scrapped this kachra Pindi metro, Lahore train and stopped the work in Multan ..

No it can't have less development budget then province with barely 10m people. Looks like PTI have decided to follow PPP, that will backfire.
 
No it can't have less development budget then province with barely 10m people. Looks like PTI have decided to follow PPP, that will backfire.
We can wait and see...but PTI is not PPP
 

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