The Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front (PIAF) have asked the government to make full utilization of development budget both at the federal as well as provincial levels to encourage the dwindling economic growth.

PIAF Chairman Mian Nauman Kabir on Friday said the authorities have utilized just 27 percent of the total allocation of PSDP in first seven months of current fiscal year. He asked for maximum efforts to fully utilize the allocations made for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) saying that unless all the PSDPs were executed timely, the wheels of the economy could not be turned.

He said the actual PSDP expenditure in first seven months has always remained between 25-30 percent of the budget allocation for a long time and full year utilization ended up between 80-95 percent at the end of the fiscal year. Based on that ratio, we expect 100 percent utilization this fiscal year of Rs701 billion allocations as 7-month actual expenditure stood at 27 percent.

According to the data, a total of Rs 188 billion had been actually spent on the development projects by the end of January against Rs 429 billion authorized for disbursement by the Planning Commission. Around Rs87 billion were utilized by the executing agencies by Nov last year and almost Rs 100 billion were disbursed in Jan 2020, he said. Around 1,034 projects were part of the ongoing PSDP and only 171 of them might be completed by end-June 2020 this year which is not good for growth.