The Federal Government has allocated Rs 4.5 billion under Area Development Programme for Northern Areas (NAs) for the fiscal year 2007-08, showing an increase of 12 percent over the last year.
The approval of the ADP was given at a cabinet meeting of the Northern legislative Council (NALC) with Major Tahir Iqbal (retd), Chief Executive and Minister for Kana division in the chair, which was attended by NALC Advisors and other concerned officers.
Including around Rs6 billion, allocated for NAs under Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), the budget for the NAs has reached to over Rs 10 billion, said Captain Sikander Ali (retd), Advisor for NALC on Information and Power, while talking to Business Recorder here on Sunday. He said 80 percent of the new budget would be spent on the 623 ongoing development projects and the remaining 20 percent funds would be utilised for execution of 276 new schemes in different districts of NAs.
He said Rs 3.2 billion would be spent on the ongoing projects and Rs 825 million would be spent on the new projects. In the new budget, priority has been given to infrastructure development and Rs 48.7 percent of the total ADP has been reserved for these sectors. Second priority has been given to social sectors and 21 percent of ADP has been proposed for education and health sectors.
In the meeting over 200 new projects were approved for the next year for which sector wise work and cash plan would be prepared in the first week of July for submission in the finance and development division.
Mirza Hussain, Advisors for NALC on Finance and Revenue said that NALC had proposed for enhancing at least 50 percent NAs budget keeping in view the backwardness of the area and only 12 percent increment is not sufficient.
However, he expressed his satisfaction over the keen interest had been shown by the present government in the development of the Northern Areas saying that it is an unprecedented move of the Federal Government for the development of NAs.
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