More private firms to invest in Thar project: CM

Karachi
Some leading companies of the country are willing to invest in the Thar coal and power generation project and after Engro Corporation, the Habib Bank, the House of Habib and Hubco too will become the provincial government’s partners in the scheme.
Chief minister Qaim Ali Shah, while delivering a speech in the provincial assembly to wind up the debate on the province’s budget for the financial year 2015-16, said Engro Corporation was already the provincial government’s partner in the Thar project and more companies would be taken on board under the public-private partnership programme.
He said the public-private partnership programme mode had been used to construct a major highway from Hyderabad to Mirpurkhas and more bridges and roads would be built under this arrangement.
The discussion on the budget continued in the assembly for seven days with the participation of 79 of the total 167 lawmakers in the House.
The chief minister said the Thar coal project would ensure the prosperity of the entire country and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif too had realised the utility of Sindh’s vast coal reserves by stating that the indigenous mineral resource of the province would be used for all coal-based power projects in the country.
Earlier in his speech in the House, finance and energy minister Murad Ali Shah informed the lawmakers that the Habib Bank, the House of Habib and Hubco would be the new partners of the provincial government in the Thar project.
The finance minister said the provincial government had 40 percent share in the Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company but that had to be increased to 60 percent as the province was required to be the major shareholder in a project for which it had to secure sovereign guarantee from the federal government.
He said the provincial government had recently been informed that its share in the project would be brought back to 51 percent with Engro finding new partners in the private sector to invest in the scheme.
The finance minister was responding to a point raised by Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan, the leader of the opposition in the House. Hassan had observed that Engro, being the initial partner, was finding it difficult to find new investors from the private sector to invest in the project and the World Bank and the IMF too had refused to finance it.
The opposition leader said the government was relying on a century-old method of underground coal gasification for the production of power from Thar coal while no phenomenal progress had been made so for the proper mining and extraction of the resource.
The finance and energy minister responded that the underground coal gasification venture was solely a federal government-funded project carried out by renowned nuclear scientist Dr Samar Mubarakmand.
He said although the provincial government had its doubts about the viability of the underground coal gasification method, it sincerely wished well for the success of the project. He said the provincial government had opted for the tried and tested method of open-pit mining for the Thar project.
In his speech, the chief minister said time would prove that the present Pakistan People’s Party’s provincial government had worked with honesty and without any corruption.
Without mentioning the names of the federal agencies including Rangers, the FIA and NAB which have recently launched an investigation and action against the Sindh’s bureaucrats for their alleged involvement in corruption, Shah said some elements were wrongly targeting the provincial government.
He said the Centre was not providing Sindh with its due share of resources and funds that could be used for the development of the province, particularly its capital, Karachi, which was regarded as the hub of social, economic and industrial activities of the entire country.
He said of the Rs 525 billion reserved under the Public Sector Development Programme in the previous financial year, the federal government had allocated only Rs22 billion for development projects in Sindh while for the new fiscal, it had been increased to Rs785 billion. However, he added, the share for Sindh’s projects had been decreased to a mere Rs9.5 billion.
Similarly, he noted, the provincial government was yet to get its due share from the Centre from the accounts of the Employees’ Old-Age Benefit Institution and the
Workers’ Welfare Fund despite raising the issue several times as these funds had to be devolved by the federal government to provinces in accordance with 18th constitutional amendment.
Shah said Sindh had to face undue resentment from then Centre whenever it demanded its share from the federal resources. He added that the federal government had expressed its annoyance in the form of increased power outages in the province.
Earlier, the finance minister informed the House that the Sindh Revenue Board had collected Rs49 billion in the outgoing financial year, a few days before the fiscal year would come to a close.
He added that it was fourth consecutive year in which the SRB had achieved its revenue collection target.
He said that the Sindh government’s spending of its budgetary allocation for development programmes during the passing financial
year remained 59 percent, which was just behind Balochistan with 67 percent but higher than those of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.
Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hassan in his speech said since the PPP’s provincial government had come into power in the year 2008, it had been promising major projects for Karachi in each year’s budget speech including the K-IV bulk water supply, the S-III sewerage treatment, mass transit etc. However, he added, these mega development projects had not started so far.
He said the per capita budgetary allocation for the people of Karachi stood at Rs2,000 that too on the basis of the census of 1998, which was too less given the massive population increase in the city since the last census.
The opposition leader said that the provincial government should adopt and implement the Provincial Finance Commission on the lines and formula of the National Finance Commission so that due funds could be allocated for development of each district of the province.
He alleged that the Japan International Cooperation Agency had refused to finance the long-pending project of the Karachi Circular Railway in the financial year 2011-12.
Hassan said a massive drive was launched in the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attack at the Army Public School Peshawar to secure the premises of public and private schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
However, he added, there was no security for the public schools in Sindh, and apart from that, they were continuing to exist in dilapidated, dangerous buildings.
The opposition leader said the provincial government should maintain a computerised record of its annual spending of around Rs32 billion on account of the disbursement of pension to its retired employees.
He added that pensions were being disbursed on monthly basis to former employees who had either died or left the country.