24% uplift projects being dropped

ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to scrap almost 24 percent of development projects worth billions of rupees from the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) list in the current fiscal year.

Out of the 1,092 projects in the PSDP list, with a throw-forward of trillions of rupees required for their completion in several years, the government has so far identified 260 development schemes worth multibillion rupees that are being abolished. The Planning Ministry is said to have devised criteria for abolishing almost one-fourth of the PSDP projects. To be exact, the Planning Ministry is all set to abolish 23.6 percent of the projects on the PSDP list, which has a total of around 1,100 projects. Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal while talking to reporters after attending PIDE annual conference said that the government was deleting 260 development projects from the PSDP and argued that it would not be done keeping in view political considerations at all. Citing an example, he said that the NED’s University Project was accomplished well on time. The minister claimed that the utilization of PSDP funds might go close to Rs1,000 billion for the current fiscal year. When asked again about the low utilization of funds so far, the minister insisted that the utilization of funds would pace up in the last quarter (April-June) period of the current fiscal year. However, official data released by the Ministry of Planning showed that out of a total allocation of PSDP of Rs1,100 billion including Rs843.145 billion for Ministries/Divisions and Rs255.854 billion for public corporations, the authorization of funds stood at Rs631 billion whereas the utilization was meagre and stood at only Rs312.3 billion in first eight months (July-Feb) period of the current fiscal year.

The federal minister said that the finance ministry had not yet shared resource envelop for outlay of the upcoming development budget but their requirement stood at Rs 2,500 to Rs 2,900 billion to align with increased development needs of the country.