KP to announce budget on June 8

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is likely to announce its annual budget for 2015-16 on June 8 with the development outlay of around Rs150 billion.
However, an official who confirmed to The News the date of unveiling the annual budget for the next fiscal, said on Tuesday that the provincial government was facing a number of fiscal difficulties in finalising both the current and development components of the budget.
He said the provincial exchequer was hamstrung with severe revenue shortfall that has left the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government with little room to launch any mega projects in the next fiscal.
However, the flagship welfare project of the provincial government, the pro-poor initiative launched with Rs4 billion in the current budget, will not only continue but the government has also increased
allocation for it to Rs8 billion to provide subsidized flour
and ghee to the most poor families in the province.
The official said the provincial government has projected the revenue collection of Rs60 billion on account of the share of the province from the net hydel profit in the next development budget. He said this seems unachievable because the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has repeatedly refused to pay the amount.
He added that like the previous year the provincial government expected to get Rs35 billion as foreign assistance. However, in the current fiscal it got only Rs28 billion of the allocated foreign assistance of Rs35 billion due to the low utilization of the amount by the provincial development machinery.
Elaborating the provincial government difficulties in the budget-making for the next fiscal, the official said it would hardly initiate any new development scheme as alone for its running Annual Development Programme (ADP) it would need Rs77 billion. “For its portfolio of the ongoing projects it needs Rs55 billion,” he added.
The provincial government will need another Rs20 billion to implement its decision on upgrading of employees in various departments and around Rs1billion to meet the expected raise in salaries in the next budget, the official revealed.
He added that the government normally spent 70.5 percent on salaries and pensions, but after the upgradation of employees it will have to spend 74 percent on it. He said only 26 percent of the budget could be set aside for the development and other incentives in the next fiscal.
The official also referred to another anomaly in the funds leakage, saying there were 5,000 ghost pensioners in the province.
He added that some employees of the federal government and Federally Administered Tribal Area (Fata) in cahoots with the banks in the province were also drawing pension from the provincial exchequer putting an additional burden of Rs1 billion on it.
He maintained that a committee tasked by the provincial government to find cases of ghost pensioners has identified irregularities in 13,000 accounts in the province.
The official accused the federal government and some provincial departments of making the issue of budget deficit even worse for the provincial government, saying the revenue receipts from the federal government are low from 50 percent while except for the Finance Department other revenue recollecting and generating entities are far behind their targets.
He said the Excise and Taxation Department has achieved only 40 percent of the target given to it by the Finance Department. “The Excise Department is saying it would raise it to 70 percent in June. The Energy and Power Department has also achieved only 50 percent target while the Home, Environment and Transport departments are also lagging behind their revenue targets,” he added.
Only the Finance Department has collected revenue of Rs1 billion as mark-up on Treasury Bills (T-bills) and Rs2billiion from other investments during the current fiscal of 2014-15, he concluded.