Chief Minister Mahmud Khan-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet on Sunday approved budget strategy-II for 2019-20. The approval was accorded at the cabinet meeting. The KP cabinet members, chief secretary, additional chief secretary, administrative secretaries and others attended.
It may be mentioned here that the cabinet had approved the budget paper-I in February this year. The budget paper-II reflected an increase of one percent as compared to the budget paper-I. The total amount of the revenue in the budget paper-I was estimated to be Rs 605.508 million whereas the budget paper-II contained Rs 657.251 million.
The secretary finance briefed the cabinet on estimated revenue for next financial year 2019-20 on account of communications, expenditures, finance, planning and the budget for newly-merged districts, etc. Addressing the meeting, the Chief Minister appreciated efforts of the Finance Department for resource mobilisation paper. He said that each and every department would be given a timeline to play their role for revenue-generation to attain self-sufficiency. He said that volume of savings would be increased and corruption would be curbed with a firm resolve.
The cabinet was informed that current expenditures for the year 2019-20 estimated to be Rs 657.251 billion while estimated development program amounts Rs 122 billion. Similarly, the budget estimate for the merged tribal districts for the year 2019-20 would be Rs 53.884 billion whereas the development program estimated amount is Rs 33 billion.
Upon recommendation of the Search and Scrutiny Committee, the cabinet also approved appointment of Usman Ghani Khattak as Chief Executive Officer, KP Oil and Gas Company Limited. It also approved to outsource the operation and repair work of the KP government-owned helicopter. The cabinet held in abeyance till next meeting the issue of payment of Rs 108 million under Billion Tree Tsunami Project.