RAWALPINDI, June 28: Rawalpindi District Council on Saturday approved Rs2,826.834 million surplus budget for the fiscal year 2003-04.

The members also approved the revised budget for the past fiscal year 2002-03 in the session. District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiyani presented the budget, while district Naib Nazim Raja Javed Ikhlas presided over the session.

The district government is expecting an amount of Rs2,631.002 million in receipts. A bulk of this figure would be provided by the provincial government from the allocable fund, which amounts to Rs2,428.686 million. The district government has got another Rs202.316 million in reserves.

The opening balance for the district government is Rs376.408 million. Therefore, the total available resources with the district government are Rs3,007.410 million.

It should be noted that the district government does not have own sources of revenue and is totally dependent on the allocation to be received from the provincial government, its own reserves and the opening balance.

The total expenditure projected for the fiscal year 2003-04 is Rs2,826.834 million. The non-development sector comprising the salaries of the staff and contingencies would consume Rs2,348.412 million, which makes up 83.06 per cent of the total outlay. To be precise, Rs2050.389 million has been set aside for the salaries of the staff.

In his speech, the district Nazim termed this allocation insufficient. He said it would be extremely difficult for his government to foot the bill of salaries and pensions particularly because of addition of 1,605 new posts and 15 per cent enhancement in the salaries of the government servants. He appealed to the Punjab government to increase the allocation for Rawalpindi district.

The development budget is extremely small and makes up 9.99 per cent of the total expenditure. The amount allocated under development head is Rs282.590 million. This allocation would cater for farm-to market-roads (Rs 61.645 million), Annual Development Programme schemes (Rs43.65 million), ongoing schemes in health and education sector (Rs31.67 million), new and ongoing schemes of village electrification (Rs20 million), Citizen Community Board Schemes (Rs70.625 million), projects submitted by district council members elected on special seats (Rs20 million), new schemes in agriculture sector (Rs5 million and a block allocation of Rs 30million. The rest of the amount is planned to be spent on DERA programme and MKDA.

Mr Kiyani said sufficient allocations had been made by the district government for roads, education, health, agriculture, electrification and women development.