Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms released a total of Rs 271 billion-51 percent funds budgeted for Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) during the first nine months of the current fiscal year. The government is unlikely to meet the target for PSDP releases by the end of the current year due to scarce resources of the federal government, sources added.
The Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms has given the deadline of one week to various ministries to convey in black and white whether the budgeted funds for different projects under the current Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) would be fully utilised by end of fiscal year.
According to the sources, the Ministry made it clear in a meeting of senior officials of various ministries held at P Block Secretariat that the ministries may re-appropriate funds for other development projects in the event that specific projects have been unable to fully utilise funds; however in case the ministries can neither re-appropriate nor fully utilise the funds by the end of the year then the unused amount would have to be surrendered at the end of the fiscal year.
The sources said that officials of ministries expressed their concerns for the Finance Ministry not disbursing budgeted funds which were delaying project implementation. Ministries also revealed that some projects were delayed due to litigation.
It was also discussed in the meeting that around about Rs 9 billion fund approved by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms for various development projects were not released by the Finance Ministry.
The sources said that the Planning Commission under the direction of the Prime Minister has decided to give first priority to Pak-China Economic Corridor projects that include energy and infrastructure and higher education projects in budget 2015-16 under PSDP. The energy projects to be completed within three years (2018) would be given the highest priority in the coming budget.
According to a handout issued by Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms, chairing the meeting with secretaries and senior level officials of Ministries and other project executing agencies on public sector development programs today the Federal Minister for Planning and development Prof Ahsan Iqbal directed them to expedite the spending of allocated money for prompt execution of projects before the end of current financial year 2014-15.
He said, "The government is committed to overcome energy crisis by 2017-18 and ensure conducive and enabling environment to attract foreign direct investment through execution of energy and infrastructure projects". He directed NHA to expedite the work on M-8 and N-85 to ensure their timely completion by June 2016 in order to connect Gwadar with Quetta.
While directing officials the Federal Minister said, "The next financial year 2015-16 will include the projects of high impact in the PSDP having closer conformity with economic and development oriented strategy as envisaged in vision 2025"
Earlier today, the Federal Minister encouraged new slot of young development fellows YDF in the Planning Commission to come up with innovative ideas and realise them in to tangible outcome through projects of high impact on socio-economic development of the country. He assured YDF to incorporate the projects of high impact on youth in the next PSDP budget 2015-16. He showed personal interest in the evaluation of young development fellows and directed them to come up with their short, medium and long term objectives and KPIs in their respective assignments. "The evaluation mechanism of YDF will incentivize the best performance", he added.
The YDF was also assigned the task of bringing proposals as how Islamabad city could be presented as the model city of the world. In this direction he advised them to make extensive web search to find out best practices and successful innovations in the field of architecture, ICT, social sector etc.