Financial mismanagement: Old schemes eat up interior ministry’s budget

The biggest challenge facing Ahsan Iqbal is a cleansing exercise of the PSDP.

ISLAMABAD:

Bureaucrats seem to be protecting the development projects of the previous government that were approved for political gains, as about four dozen schemes have been adjusted in the interior ministry’s proposed development budget for the next fiscal year, consuming 15% of its pie.

Most of these schemes are of similar nature -- split into smaller projects to avoid scrutiny at the higher levels, according to official documents. The Planning Commission has added over 41 projects in next year’s proposed Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) in a head that is meant for the development schemes of the law enforcement agencies. Out of these, 21 projects are categorised “new” and have been added for the first time in the PSDP.



Many of these schemes were approved in February 2013, just less than a month before the completion of the constitutional five-year term of the PPP government in mid-March.



For the next fiscal year, the proposed development budget of the ministry of interior is Rs6.3 billion including Rs1.8 billion for new schemes. The 41 schemes make 30% of the total 135 schemes that have been added against the ministry’s budget. The accumulative cost of these 41 schemes is Rs894 million, which is about 15% of the total budget of the interior ministry.

For 21 new schemes Rs506 million has been allocated, which is 28.4% of the proposed budget for the new schemes. For the 19 ongoing schemes Rs388.2 million have been proposed, which is 8.6% of the budget allocated for the total ongoing schemes of the Ministry of Interior.



The documents showed that all of these schemes are located in Islamabad and its surrounding areas. About two-dozen projects are of road construction, about a dozen of water supply schemes, couple of health schemes and about half dozen of agriculture and veterinary, the documents showed.

All of these schemes got approved from the Departmental Development Working Party (DDWP), the body that is having mandate to approve up to Rs60 million projects and only those pertaining to the ministry’s own work. The DDWP is chaired by the secretary of the ministry.



None of the project has cost over Rs60 million, as the project was broken into more than one to avoid approval from the Central Development Working Party (CDWP), the body having mandate to approve up to Rs1 billion projects and is chaired by the Planning Commission’s deputy chairman.

An official of the Planning Commission admitted that these schemes did not match the terms of references set for approval of the development schemes by the ministry’s DDWP.



How the DDWP forum was used to avoid the approval from the CDWP can been gauged from the fact that three water supply schemes were approved in January and February 2012. The total cost of these three schemes is Rs98.5 million and Rs83.3 million have been allocated for these schemes for the next fiscal year.

A project of augmentation of irrigation water in Islamabad Capital territory was approved on February 19, 2013 with a cost of Rs53.2 million. After four days, another DDWP meeting was called and many projects of roads and agriculture were approved by splitting into smaller projects.

Probably, the biggest challenge facing the newly appointed Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal would be to carry out a cleansing exercise of the PSDP as the bureaucrats have added dozens of projects of the previous government that had been approved on political grounds.

He got the first briefing on the PSDP on Saturday, just two days before its presentation to the National Economic Council for approval.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2013.