AZIZ BUNERI
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Thursday announced Rs 472 billion for the 2015-16 budget, and it included Rs 124 billion for developmental schemes from its local components.
The Provincial Finance Minister Muzaffar, along with Finance Secretary Syed Said Badshah Bukhari, while addressing the media during the pre-budget briefing, said that they are waiting for feedback from the federal government but the estimated volume of the fiscal budget would be around Rs 470 billion.
Muzaffar told the media that as compared to the previous budget the Health Department’s share would be raised by 19 per cent, police by 14 per cent, Judiciary and Administration of Justice by 13 per cent, Higher Education by 18 per cent, Social Welfare and Special Education by 51 per cent and the local government by 90 per cent, said the minister.
The minister said that they would try to create 10,000 jobs vacancies in the education department in the year 2015-16. In the Health Department the government would try to create 2,000 vacancies for nurses, both male and female, to resolve the issue of staff in basic health units and hospitals. Together the government would try to create 159,000 jobs vacancies in all sectors. “We wish to do much more and take lead from all the provinces but we have shortage of resources,” he said.
During the question answer session, the minister and secretary finance said that they would get 90 per cent utilisation of the previous year’s budget developmental portion by the end of this month. “Historically we do maximum utilization of the annual developmental programme (ADP) in the last quarter of the year,” said Bukhari, the secretary finance.
Regarding the KP share in the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) the federal government has spent 1.42 per cent of the total in 2010-11, while in 2011-12 it spent only 4.11 per cent on KP and 2012-13 only 2.26 per cent. “The federal government has not provided us the figures of the year 2013-14 and 2014-15 despite our repeated demand,” said the minister adding that the federal government doesn’t spend funds on KP, and only give verbal statements. He said that projects which were started 10 years back are not yet completed.