However, the most startling part of the handout issued by the Sindh government on the proceedings of Tuesday’s meeting quoted Shah as saying that “overall Finance Division’s allocation for PSDP 2019-20 was Rs36.61 billion; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been given 75% of the funds, followed by Balochistan at 15%, Sindh only 4.8% and Punjab 4%.”
Earlier this month, the CM had informed another meeting that his government would cut the development portfolio of the province for 2019-20. He said that the size of the ADP for 2018-19 was Rs230 billion but the government could utilise only Rs72.88 billion by end of April, which again he attributed to non-transfer of funds from the Centre. Addressing a session of the Sindh Assembly on April 22, Shah had claimed that in the current financial year, Sindh received only Rs402 billion from the Centre against its due share of Rs665 billion. “How can we complete projects when we are faced with such shortage of funds? Centre still owes us Rs253 billion,” he had complained.
But Islamabad had disputed the contention of the Sindh CM. In a statement in March this year, the federal government said that it had released Rs312.2 billion plus an additional Rs57.5 billion as arrears to Sindh from July 2018 to February 2019. Now it is really difficult to make out who is right and who is wrong in what seems to be a game of political point-scoring. But the Truth is always a far greater casualty in Politics than in War.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 30th, 2019.
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