The Supreme Court Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Dam Fund, which was started with much grandeur and had compiled as much as Rs10 billion, is now losing value. The Supreme Court was told on Tuesday that it was losing approximately Rs10 million a day as interest by not timely investing over the funds collected so far from donations.

The Supreme Court has expressed dismay at the State Bank of Pakistan for not giving the Court proper advice on how to invest the funds in a timely manner. The wastage of interest and the delay in a proper investment plan is a pity considering that the funds being withheld were public money. Now that some loss has occurred, it seems the Court is likely to opt for the least-damage route and might not waste further time; the Court has hinted that it is set to determine how to invest the available funds on short-term instruments in the interregnum period for two, three or seven days till a proper investment mode is determined. It seems more likely that the Court will consider other investment options, since the SBP so far has been disappointing.

To hear of the losing value of the collected donations of public money for the dam is upsetting, yet is it really unfair to blame the State Bank for not providing good options for investment, when the whole scheme of a crowd-funded project was so unusual and impractical in the first place? Specialists had warned that crowd-funding would not collect even half of the money required for the building of a dam- since that prediction has come true, it has fallen to those left behind to now make the best of the donations. It is not so surprising then, that since the initial goal was so ill-advised, investment options were ill-prepared to deal with the results.