PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caretaker government on Thursday unveiled Rs529.11 billion worth of spending plan for the next four months of the current fiscal (November-February) with the development outlay of Rs112.18 billion.

The cabinet approved the plan in a special meeting chaired by Chief Minister Mohammad Azam Khan.

Finance minister Ahmad Rasul Bangash later told reporters that the cabinet approved the Rs529.11 billion expenditure outlay for the next four months including Rs417 billion for current expenditure and development expenses of Rs112.18 billion.

He said that outlay included Rs366.298 billion for settled districts current expenditure while Rs91.85 billion development spending.

The minister said that the government had also allocated Rs50.702 billion for the current expenditure of tribal districts and Rs20.26 billion development outlay for the region.

Minister hopes province will get funds from centre amid dire financial situation

He acknowledged the dire financial situation of the province but said hopefully, the province would receive funding from the centre.

Mr Bangash said that federal government has not paid an outstanding amount of Rs232 billion to the province including around Rs80 billion in lieu of net hydel profit and its arrears.

He said that center has also not paid to province Rs20 billion spent on flour subsidy earlier this year and Rs10 billion promised for flood relief in the last fiscal.

The minister said for the next four months, the budget documents projected Rs450 billion in receipts against expenditure estimates of Rs529 billion, showing funding gap of Rs79 billion.

The budgetary estimates show that the province will receive Rs292.3 billion of federal transfers, Rs27.3 billion under the net hydel profit and its arrears, Rs28.3 billion of own tax and non-tax revenue.

In addition, the documents projected merged areas revenue at Rs42.2 billion and unspecified revenue listed as “others” amounting to Rs53.7 billion.

For the settled districts, the caretaker government has allocated Rs366 billion for provincial salary, Rs85 billion for district salary, Rs47 billion for pensions, Rs114 billion for non-salary and Rs13 billion for district non-salary.

On the other hand, provincial annual development programme has been pitched to Rs43 billion. Besides, Rs8 billion has been allocated for the settled districts’ ADP, Rs36.8 billion of foreign funded projects and Rs2 billion of the federal public sector development programme.

The merged areas current expenditure estimates allocation of Rs20 billion for salary, Rs13 billion for district salary, Rs1.4 billion for pension, Rs1.3 billion for temporarily displaced persons and Rs14 billion of non-salary of provincial and district non-salary.

Similarly, Rs8.6 billion has been allocated for merged areas ADP, Rs10.3 billion Accelerated Implementation Programme and Rs1.2 billion of foreign project assistance.

The budget documents showed the province faced a revenue gap of Rs113.1 billion during first three months of first quarter (July-October) of the current fiscal.

The budgetary estimates showed that the province had pitched its revenue at Rs442.6 billion for July-October period.

For the first three months of the quarter, the revenue estimates were projected at Rs331.9 billion but it received only Rs218.7 billion.

Similarly, the expenses for four months were pitched to be Rs462.93 billion, while estimates for the first three months were projected at Rs347.2 billion.

However, only Rs222.5 billion was spent during the three months of the current fiscal.

The documents showed paltry development expenditure of Rs27 billion, including Rs20 billion in settled and Rs7 billion in tribal districts, during the first three months of the quarter.

Mr Bangash said the cabinet asked the federal government to clear the province’s liabilities. He also asked the federal government to ensure financial merger of the tribal areas with the province, as province population has gone up by Rs5.7 million after the merger causing further strain for the province’s economy.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2023