Centre to give Rs50b for housing project
The Punjab government launched the Ashiana housing project for low income homeless people in January and set up the PLDC to implement it. The plan was to offer subsidised housing to individuals with monthly incomes of less than Rs20,000.
The federal government has decided to transfer Rs50 billion to the provincial government of Sindh for executing its emergency housing project.
According to sources, the decision was taken in a recent meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet.
The Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives proposed that an amount of Rs30 billion allocated in the budget for fiscal year 2024-25 for the "Flood Response Emergency Housing Project", later revised to Rs50 billion as the federal Public Sector Development Programme's (PSDP) share, may be provided to the Sindh administration.
In its briefing, the planning ministry pointed out that the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) had approved a revised PC-I of the Flood Response Emergency Housing Project on June 29, 2024 with a total cost of Rs296 billion.
While giving its nod, Ecnec gave directives for including the local component of Rs50 billion, staggered over a period of two financial years, in such a manner that a provision was made in the PSDP for providing Rs30 billion in fiscal year 2024-25 and the remaining Rs20 billion in fiscal year 2025-26.
The necessary PSDP allocation for the project has been made under Demand No 120 of development expenditure of the Ministry of Planning for fiscal year 2024-25.
The allocation of Rs30 billion needs to be transferred to the government of Sindh as per Finance Division's release strategy for the development budget and the authorisation issued by the Ministry of Planning.
For the purpose, the allocation is required to be placed in the appropriate demand category of the Finance Division through a technical supplementary grant for onward transfer to the government of Sindh through the issuance of debit authority, as was done for other provincial projects included in the PSDP.
The ECC considered a summary submitted by the Ministry of Planning on the "Transfer of Emergency Housing Project (Revised) from the Ministry of Planning to the Finance Division" and approved the proposal.