KARACHI-Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that despite shortfall in federal transfers of funds the provincial government has been striving hard to carry out development activities so that maximum uplift schemes could be completed this year.
This, he said on Friday, while presiding over a meeting held to reviewing fiscal position of the province. The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, Secretary P&D Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary Finance Najam Shah and senior officers of P&D and finance departments.
On the occasion, the chief minister was briefed that total budget of the provincial was Rs1,124 billion against total estimated expenditure of Rs1,144 billion, with a shortfall of Rs20.5 billion.
Secretary Finance informed the chief minister that there are Rs773.2 billion non-development expenditure against which the chief minister approved a deduction of Rs73.2 billion and fixed non-development expenditure at Rs700 billion.
Chairman P&D Mohammad Waseem told the chair that 1,965 development schemes are going on in the province, of them 710 would be completed by June 2019. He said that these 710 development schemes have an allocation of Rs42.7 billion against which Rs34.9 billion have been released and Rs7.8 billion are still required to complete them. At this the chief minister directed Secretary Finance to release the required amount of Rs7.8 billion so that these schemes could be completed. Mr Waseem said that there were 451 priority schemes of Rs73.3 billion against which 29.1 billion have been released and Rs11 billion are yet to be released. The chief minister said that he would try to arrange Rs11 billion for completion of the priority schemes.
The chief minister was also told that there were 804 fast moving schemes of Rs74.3 billion against which Rs50.9 billion have been released and Rs23.4 billion would still be required to complete them.
The chief minister said that he have spared an amount of Rs73.3 billion from the non-development expenditures which he would try to utilize them for completion of development schemes.
The meeting was told that the federal government was supposed to release Rs665.1 billion during the current financial year but the provincial government has received so far only Rs390.2 billion up to March 2019. In such financial conditions the provincial government through financial management was carrying on its development works all over Sindh.
He directed Chairman P&D Mohammad Waseem to get all the schemes of underpasses, flyover and roads going on in the city completed by June 2019. “In the next budget we would launch more schemes for urban and rural areas,” he said.
AT SOURCE DEDUCTION
Chairing another meeting, the chief minister said that he is committed to refund Rs7.21 billion from the FBR which it have been deducted at source from Account No.1 of the Sindh government.
Minister Excise & Taxation Mukesh Kumar Chawla briefing the chief minister said that his team have held a number of meeting with FBR and now another decisive meeting is fixed for Monday.
Secretary Excise Raheem Shaikh and his team would hold a meeting with FBR member who is coming from Islamabad on Monday and would reconcile the figures on which dispute has been cropped up and resulted in at source deductions from Sindh government’s account. Once these figures are reconciled the FBR would accept Sindh government’s claim of refund of Rs7.21 billion, Mr Chawla told the chief minister.
The chief minister directed Excise & Taxation Minister to keep him posting day to day progress of the meeting with FBR, otherwise he would adopt legal procured.