The National Highway Authority (NHA) is in urgent need of Rs 450-500 billion to complete its on-going projects, said Secretary Communication Anwar Ahmad Khan, while briefing the sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs on Tuesday.
A bill of USAID is expected to be passed by the Congress by March-end, under which Pakistan is expected to receive funds for the infrastructure projects. This was revealed by NHA officials in the committee meeting, which held with Sardar Fateh Mohammad in the chair, here.
Secretary Communication, while briefing the committee said after Wapda, NHA is receiving the highest development funds under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). Only Pakistan and Afghanistan have not completed their road portion, connecting them with Central Asian countries. The government should give more focus on the regional link road projects, which are crucial for the development and progress of the country. Developmental projects of NHA have long-lasting impacts on the long-term economic development of the country, he maintained.
Total length of roads in the country is about 12,000 kms of which 4,500 kms is in Balochistan. NHA officials said that negotiation with Asian Development Bank (ADB) is going on for funds, however due to security reason, the Bank has yet to give green signal for funding. The committee directed NHA to start work on those projects, waiting for foreign finance, by itself if the ADB do not release funds for the projects.
The NHA officials informed the committee that out of 34 projects, 8 projects have been completed and PC-iv has been submitted, whereas four projects are about 70-80 percent completed, while work on 22 more projects are going on in the province. Earlier, the committee expressed dissatisfaction over the expenditure report on the ongoing development projects of the Balochistan Development Authority (BDA) submitted to the committee.
Briefing the committee, Additional Secretary BDA informed that water issue in Gwadar is going worsen with each passing day. Provincial government spends Rs 17 million every week on water. An industrial state was included in the Gwadar master plan for which the government had installed one water plant, having the capacity to provide 20 gallon water to the industrial state every day. The project was earlier with the Ministry of Industry Balochistan, but now BDA supervise it. Now when the work has been stopped on Industrial state, the 20 gallon water has been diverted to main Gwadar pipeline.
The committee observed that the province is getting Rs 200 billion on account of National Finance Commission (NFC) Award and Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan, but instead of improvement, the situation further worsened. Javed said the government has released Rs 97 million for the Desalination plant at Gaddani, Jiwani and Pasni project since 2010-11. However, Planning Commission official informed the committee that Rs 162 million have already been released for the project, while the government has earmarked Rs 70 million for the current fiscal year.
The committee directed BDA officials to get verified their documents and reports regarding the development projects from Auditor General of Pakistan and Accountant General of Pakistan and submit the reports in the next meeting.
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