LAHORE: The Punjab government’s overdraft was within the limits of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Punjab Finance Minister Tanvir Ashraf Kaira said on Monday. He made these remarks while meeting members of the provincial assembly (MPA) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) workers at his office. He said that the Punjab government had accelerated the pace of development projects so that the public could get benefit from the welfare-oriented schemes as early as possible.
The minister said that necessary directions had been issued to all departments concerned to complete the projects on time.”Monitoring was also being carried out to ensure standard and quality of work”, Kaira said. He said that a special committee was constituted under his chairmanship which saved billions of rupees by slashing non-development expenditure. “For the first time in Punjab’s history, we saved Rs 2.80 billion by curtailing our non-development operational budget”, he added.
The minister said that lots of resources were being used in the war against terrorism. Kaira said that the Punjab government was financially stable and efforts were being made to achieve the targets of the annual budget.