PC seeks PM approval to drop 140 locally funded projects

Islamabad: The Planning Commission has moved a summary to the Prime Minister seeking formal approval to drop 140 locally funded projects worth Rs 7 billion in different sectors to reduce expenditure. Sources claimed that these projects would be throw-forward for the next year.

The fiscal deficit is targeted to decline to 4.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in current fiscal year from 7.4 percent in 2007-08.The government has committed to the International Monetary Fund to reduce domestically-financed development spending by about 1 percent of GDP through better project prioritisation.

Sources said that these are ongoing projects including 6 projects of water and power ministry, 5 information technology, 15 food and agriculture, 3 finance, 28 science and technology, 13 commerce, 30 health, 6 housing, 6 Board of Investment, 14 Higher Education Commission (HEC) and 3 interior ministry.

Spokesman Planning Commission Asif Shaikh confirmed that the Commission had moved a summary to the Prime Minister for rationalisation of the projects but he did not give details about the projects short-listed for this purpose.

Sources said that in next phase, the projects that required foreign lending will be slashed as government was facing problems to generate loans for these projects from international donors. In this regard, the Planning Commission has asked the concerned ministers to prioritise the projects. The government wants total adjustment of Rs 100 billion by slashing public sector development programme.

Total PSDP volume for the current financial year is Rs 371 billion that will be reduced to Rs 271 billion. The government released Rs 71 billion in the first six months (July-December) of the current financial year against Rs 132.6 billion in corresponding period of last year.

The Planning Commission has already excluded 120 projects from monitoring network and has revised monitoring targets from 700 projects to 580 projects for the current financial year. The Commission reduced the projects from 205 to 150 for monitoring in infrastructure sector, 300 to 250 projects in social sector, and 300 to 250 projects in other sectors. The monitoring of the projects helps to make timely implementation of the projects.

The Planning Commission has monitored 513 projects so far and is expecting the timely completion of only 44 projects including 5 projects in infrastructure, 9 projects in social sector and 30 other sectors. After the monitoring, Planning Commission has assessed that 325 projects would face delay in implementation for more than one year that include 82 projects in infrastructure, 173 projects in social sector and 70 in other sectors.

As many as 102 projects would face one year delay including 5 projects in infrastructure, 34 projects in social sector and 63 projects in other sectors. As many as 42 projects are at initial stage. Sources said that as many as 170 projects are facing delay due to lack of management and 73 projects for delay in fund releases.

Contractors inefficiency is causing delay in implementation of 60 projects, 16 projects for land acquisition problems, 9 projects of law and order, 8 projects due to lack of co-ordination between federal and provincial governments and 5 projects facing delay due to loan disbursement.