Amid financial constraints, govt releases Rs129b for uplift projects under PSDP

ISLAMABAD    -    On one hand the federal gov­ernment is delaying the re­lease of Rs 21 billion for the Punjab Assembly elections, however, at the same time it has authorized Rs129 billion for development projects un­der the Public Sector Develop­ment Programme (PSDP) for the 4th quarter of 2022-23.

“Despite the financial con­straints and disruptions caused by the super floods last year, the ministry has released Rs129 billion for the PSDP projects for the 4th quarter of (2022-23),” said the Minis­try of Planning, Development & Special Initiatives here Sun­day. The Water Resource Di­vision and Higher Education Commission (HEC) have been given top priority for the PSDP projects, said the ministry. 

According to the latest data provided by the Planning Min­istry, an amount of Rs 129 bil­lion has been released for de­velopment projects under PSDP for the fourth quarter (2022-2023), including Rs 27 billion for Azad Jammu & Kashmir AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan GB and Ex-FATA.

For the fourth quarter, an amount of Rs 30 billion was re­leased to the Power Division to speed up the projects like Di­amer-Bhasha Dam, Mohmand Dam, Kachi Canal, Nai Gaj Dam, while Rs 22 billion were re­leased for Ministry of Commu­nication to expedite the projects like Khuzdar-Kuchlak Road, Du­alization & Improvement of Old Bannu Road. Rupees 8 billion were released for HEC to com­plete the projects. Similarly, an amount of Rs 4 billion was re­leased for the Ministry of Hous­ing and Works, Rs 8 billion for the Ministry of Railway, and Rs 5 billion for the Power Division.

It is worth noting here that in the last quarter of (2021-22), there was a zero release for PSDP, which resulted in the government shrinking the PSDP from Rs 700b to Rs 550b.

The Ministry said that un­fortunately, the experiment of bringing the PTI rule shrank the PSDP to Rs 500 billion in April 2021.

It is worth to note here that the utilization of foreign aid component of PSDP has in­creased by 68pc and reached over Rs 101 billion, while cut of Rs 13 billion has been imposed on rupee component of the de­velopment budget of the ongo­ing fiscal year.

The total PSDP allocation for the FY 2022-23 was Rs727 bil­lion which included Rs667 bil­lion of rupee component and Rs60 billion of foreign exchange component. The rupee compo­nent has been revised down­ward to Rs 654 billion.

On the other hand, the au­thorisation of FEC was almost Rs41 billion or 68 percent higher than the original alloca­tion of Rs60 billion in the PSDP 2022-23.