Three-year period: Allocations for water schemes cut by half

Funds have come down from Rs59b in FY14 to Rs31b in FY17

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government has cut by half allocations for water projects during its three-year tenure, which appears to be hitting the agriculture sector hard as growth of this vital segment of economy has turned negative.

The government has focused more on road infrastructure and metro bus projects, but pushed water schemes among less priority areas.



For the conservation and augmentation of water resources, it earmarked Rs59 billion for different projects in the budget for 2013-14 - its first after coming to power in June 2013. Of that amount, only Rs35 billion could be utilised due to delay in release of funds.

In 2015-16, the allocation was slashed by around 50% to Rs30.12 billion. So far, only Rs23 billion has been released, but the government hopes it will be able to utilise Rs25 billion by the end of the year on June 30.

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2015-16, the agriculture sector registered a negative growth of 0.19% against a rise of 2.53% in the previous year.

Despite the negative growth and fears of food security issues, the government has failed to substantially increase fund allocation for water projects.



In the 2016-17 budget, an amount of Rs31.06 billion has been set aside for water schemes, which is almost the same as the allocation in the outgoing financial year.

According to officials, Pakistan is becoming a water-stressed country due to lack of storages and India’s plan to build more dams on the rivers coming to Pakistan. However, no water management policy has been put in place and farmers are forced to use groundwater with the help of tube wells to irrigate their crops, which leads to higher electricity bills.

They said the farmers were disappointed as the government had focused on fertiliser manufacturers who were getting billions of rupees in cross-subsidy on gas, but the benefit was not being passed on to the growers.

“Pakistan will be facing energy and food security challenges in the future due to lack of government’s interest in the water sector,” an official warned and said agricultural production was directly related to the supply and effective consumption of water as a major input.



Pointing to the government’s lack of attention, the officials said when Pakistan lost the Kishanganga dam case against India in the International Court of Arbitration, the government could not challenge the verdict before the neutral expert of the World Bank even after two years.

The country has been facing flood devastation for the last few years, but no heed has been paid to calls for building water reservoirs. At present, water storage capacity of the country is 14 million acre feet (maf) whereas its annual consumption stands at 117 maf.

“The consumption of one million acre feet has an impact of $1 billion on the economy, this way Pakistan has been facing a loss of $14 billion every year due to wastage as reservoirs are not too many,” the official said.

There are only two major dams - Tarbela and Mangla. The former was built in 1977 and its storage capacity has dropped to 6.4 maf against the earlier 9.4 maf. However, Mangla Dam’s capacity has been enhanced by 3 maf to 7.4 maf following a structure raising project.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2016.

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