PM pledges need-based budget allocations

By News Desk

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed on Tuesday budget allocations would be made on need and merit basis without succumbing to any political influence, as he criticised previous governments for ignoring ground realities in earmarking funds.

Speaking at the launch of Ehsaas District Development Portal, “Data4Pakistan”, here, he said more than half of Punjab’s budget was spent on Lahore alone while ignoring other cities of the province. He said the incumbent government would focus on equal development of all the areas.

Khan said this portal would help the government in spending development funds with justice and according to the needs of the people, adding: “Unfortunately the powerful people in government spent all the development funds in their constituencies thus widening the gap between the rich and the poor”.

The Premier said the government was committed to alleviate poverty as progress and prosperity of Pakistan was linked with uplifting the poor and downtrodden segments of society. “It is my belief that a country where there is an ocean of poor people and few rich cannot make progress,” he said.

The Prime Minister said this portal would help identify the areas which were in most need of funds, besides finding other vital statistics about issues being faced by the local people. “This is the first step in finding necessary ways and means to fight poverty,” he said, adding Data4Pakistan would also help in policy making at the higher level as well as allocation of budget.

Earlier, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar said Data4Pakistan provided open and public access to a spatial interactive portal that had poverty estimates for every district in Pakistan, along with over 120 development and policy indicators.

She said the portal currently had six rounds of district poverty and development data, covering the period 2004-2018. This portal would be a very valuable resource for federal, provincial and district level policymakers for decision making, she said and added the Data4Pakistan Portal had been developed in collaboration with the World Bank.

Dr Nishtar said the indicators currently available in the portal, included a range of demographic, health, education and employment statistics as well as access to key services like water, sanitation, electricity and gas. “It also provides a number of gender parity indices at the district level,” she added.