The body announced by the PM will determine which pending projects will move ahead. PHOTO: FILE
The issue came to light after the prime minister announced the formation of a committee headed by PML-N parliamentarians Hamza Shahbaz Sharif and Captain (retd) Safdar to examine the list of pending directives and determine which to proceed further with.
The body, announced in December, will examine all the ongoing portfolios of the PSDP and determine whether they need additional funding or vice versa. The Cabinet Division has notified all the ministries, departments, and statutory and autonomous bodies of the federal government to resubmit executive and administrative directives issued by the Prime Minister Office (PMO) prior to June 6, 2013 with the latter.
The committee will decide the fate of 485 development projects promised by the previous government.
A Cabinet Division official stated on condition of anonymity that on January 7, a meeting of the committee was held and several sub-committees have also been established to further review projects across the country.
“The purpose is to look into all the announcements made by the previous governments and whether or not the initiation of those projects was damaging for the exchequer,” said the official.
An HEC official told The Express Tribune that the previous government never bothered to discuss the feasibility of the projects with the commission.
“Many of the projects were announcements for political mileage and nothing more,” the officer added.
Of the 67 projects, 18 were announced by the prime minister, five by the president, and one each by the Senate deputy chairman and the Senate Secretariat. According to documents available with The Express Tribune, 37 of the projects have not been included in the PSDP for the current fiscal year.
The projects to be reviewed include the construction of new universities and sub-campuses, and the establishment of new schemes, research centres and grants for endowment funds.
For the ongoing fiscal year, the government allocated Rs18.4 billion for PSDP this year against last year’s Rs15.8 billion.
A hefty amount of Rs39 billion has also been allocated to increase the enrolment in higher education by 14% from 1.08 million students in 2012-13 to 1.23 million students in 2013-14.
According to HEC sources, the government has yet to pay Rs6 billion from the development budget for the fiscal year 2012-13 as the government has only announced Rs18.49 billion under PSDP in the current fiscal year, out of which only Rs5.54 billion has been released till now.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 13th, 2014.
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