K-P spends all funds released last year
Almost all the money released for development projects listed in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the province in the fiscal year 2019-20, was spent, including all the funds released for projects in the newly merged tribal areas.
This was disclosed during a high-level meeting, chaired by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, the other day to review the progress made on the projects listed under the ADP.
The meeting was told that over the past two years, around 99% of released funds were utilised and that no allocated funds had lapsed.
Reviewing the two-year performance of departments, officials said that the performance of the Agriculture Department on implementing developmental schemes was top with a score of 86, while the performance of the Local Government and Public Health Engineering departments was second and third respectively.
The forum was told that some 249 developmental projects had been approved under the ADP for the settled districts and 88 projects were approved for the merged districts. Similarly, 122 uplift projects were approved for the merged districts under the Accelerated Implementation Programme (AIP).
During the last financial year, Rs55 billion had been spent on developmental projects in the newly merged areas, which was 100% for the released funds.
It was further told that in the last financial year, a total of 1,323 monitoring reports had been generated on various annual developmental projects in the settled districts, and 227 reports for projects in the newly merged districts.
Participants of the meeting decided that completion of ongoing developmental schemes will be prioritised in the ADP of the next financial year and efforts will be made to allocate 90% of ADP funds for the completion of ongoing developmental schemes.
Further, in the light of guidelines issued by Planning Commission, preparations for next ADP will commence at the earliest for which all departments will have to submit project profiles of their developmental schemes to the provincial Planning and Development department well in time.
It was also decided that without proper PC-1, no developmental scheme would be included in the ADP.
CM Mahmood directed provincial departments to ensure all their schemes are approved in time.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 27th, 2020.