ABBOTTABAD, May 18: Participants of a pre-budget seminar on Friday called for allocation of funds in the next budget on need basis instead of political grounds.

The seminar titled ‘Citizens’ voice for development’ was organised by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa finance and planning and development departments in collaboration with the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) here.

Government officials, representatives of nongovernmental organisations, civil society activists and journalists showed up in large numbers.

Noted among speakers were local MPAs Javed Abbasi and Qalandar Lodhi, provincial finance secretary Sahibzada Saeed Ahmad, chief planning officer Usman Gul and former additional chief secretary Khalid Aziz.

They spoke about long and short-term fiscal policies for better economic growth in the province and emphasised that the people’s needs should be kept in view before making fiscal policies and allocation of funds in the budget.

The finance secretary acknowledged the government’s failure to overcome fiscal challenges and said despite all efforts, non-development expenditure couldn’t be curtailed. He said under the head of salary and pension payment, the government’s liabilities had jumped from Rs54 billion to Rs94 billion over the last four years.

Mr Saeed declared the delicate security situation a major barrier to better revenue generation but said after the NFC award, the government revised its economic growth strategy to improve productivity, socioeconomic development and social sector.

He said a foolproof system of check and balance would be developed for use of development funds and sought the civil society’s support to keep a vigilant eye on their spending.

”Foreign donors are more than satisfied with our system. The European Union is going to provide us with 40 billion euro development funding in the wake of the successful completion of education projects,” he said.

The finance secretary said revenue base would be increased in the next fiscal. He said power, oil and gas sectors had shown remarkable development over the last four years and would become a major source of the government’s income.

Participants from Battagram, Kohistan, Haripur and other areas floated budget proposals, especially about removal of disparity in the funds’ allocation for power, gas and oil sectors.

MPAs Javed and Qalandar praised provincial Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti over massive development in the province and said he should ensure that the finance department approve the schemes proposed by districts.

In his presentation, Khalid Aziz said Rs22 billion was spent on security and that needed to be increased.

Civil society activists presented statistics about previous budgetary allocations to districts in the province and said poor districts like Kohistan were often ignored during the budget.

Later, participants called for fair distribution of funds to districts, saying it would help reduce the sense of deprivation among the least developed districts.