Delayed payments

There is a national flaw when it comes to the timely or complete payment for anything, be it goods and services or as most recently, the centre to one of the provinces — in this case, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). The federal government has been both laggardly and niggardly in the release of funds that are owed to the K-P government for reasons that are not difficult to discern. The K-P government is now facing a Rs14 billion deficit as a result of the delay in transferring the whole amount of taxes and surcharges that have been set aside for the province in the annual federal budget. There are now complaints that the delay is beginning to affect development projects in the province.

Considering that K-P is carrying some mighty burdens courtesy the federal government, it makes little sense to throw rocks on the road. There are more than a million displaced people scattered across K-P, but with concentrations near Bannu and Peshawar; there is a full-scale war being fought in Fata that borders K-P and the province is still reeling from the effects of the latest round of floods to hit it. The province needs every rupee it can lay its hands on if it is to keep assorted wolves from the door, and although the shortfall is not huge in proportional terms, it is of sufficient size to interrupt cash flows and supply chains — and salaries — province-wide. The money is already in the federal coffers and it seems that it is only small-minded meanness that keeps it sitting there — along with the strong possibility that somebody, somewhere will be quietly pocketing the interest it generates with no intention of passing this largesse to the people of K-P. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the centre is making life difficult for K-P because K-P in the form of its ruling party and its leader, who is currently containerised in Islamabad, is making life difficult for the centre. It is perhaps, too much to hope that Pakistan has moved beyond the infantile politics of the playpen, a reality that leaves us a Peter Pan state, never growing up.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2014.

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