While the government has failed to fully honour its commitment to the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) parliamentarians and members of the provincial assemblies to grant them development funds because of the “persistent financial crisis”, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s pledge to provide Rs 70 million to each Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) MPA in Punjab for development schemes is unlikely to materialise because of the same reasons.
At the time of the power-sharing deal between the PML-Q and PPP in May this year, the PPP leadership had assured the Chaudhrys that PML-Q members of the Senate, National Assembly and provincial assemblies would be given additional development funds which were not released five months after the deal. Subsequently, the PML-Q ministers submitted their resignations to party President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain after a parliamentary party meeting . “After this threat, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani assured the PML-Q leadership again that each of the party’s MNAs and senators would be given Rs 100 million for development projects while the PML-Q MPAs in four provincial assemblies would be given Rs 50 million each,” said a PML-Q MNA. He said the PML-Q MNAs were annoyed over the inordinate delay in the release of development funds. “When we sent proposed lists of development schemes to Prime Minister’s Secretariat, we were asked to prioritise the schemes as the Finance Ministry was unable to release funds for all projects due to scarcity of resources,” he added. On the other hand, officials of the Finance Ministry claim that the fiscal space of the government did not allow the ministry to allocate huge development funds to MPs. “We need around Rs 10 to 12 billion to appease all PML-Q lawmakers,” they said. Another official of the ministry said revenue collection in the first quarter of the current fiscal year (2011-12) was not up to the mark as the government collected only Rs 533 billion, while the fiscal deficit remained around Rs 257 billion mainly because of the huge debt servicing of Rs 186 billion. “How can the Finance Ministry appease all lawmakers from the ruling coalition when it is already introducing cuts in the federal government’s Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) and released only Rs 47 billion in the first quarter of the current financial year for the PSDP?” he said.