Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that despite shortfall in federal transfers of funds, the provincial government was making all out efforts to carry out development activities so that maximum uplift schemes could be completed this year.
He was presiding over a meeting to reviewing fiscal position of the province here on Friday. The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, Secretary P&D Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary Finance Najam Shah and senior officers of P&D and finance departments. Murad Ali Shah was told that the total outlay of the provincial budget was Rs 1,124 billion against which total expenditures of Rs 1,1445 billion have been estimated. It meant there was a shortfall of Rs 20.5 billion.
Secretary Finance told the Chief Minister that there were Rs 773.2 billion non-development expenditures against which the chief minister approved a deduction of Rs 73.2 billion and fixed non-development expenditures at Rs700 billion. Chairman P&D Mohammad Waseem told the chair that 1965 development schemes were going on in the province, of them 710 would be completed by June 2019. He said that these 710 development schemes had an allocation of Rs 42.7 billion against which Rs 34.9 billion have been released and Rs7.8 billion were still required to complete them.
At this the chief minister directed Secretary Finance to release the required amount of Rs 7.8 billion so that these schemes could be completed.
Mr. Waseem said that there were 451 priority schemes of Rs 73.3 billion against which 29.1 billion have been released and Rs 11 billion are yet to be released.
Despite the shortfall, the provincial government was making all out efforts to carry out development activities: Murad Ali Shah
The chief minister said that he would try to arrange Rs 11 billion for completion of the priority schemes. Murad Ali Shah was also told that there were 804 fast moving schemes of Rs 74.3 billion against which Rs 50.9 billion have been released and Rs 23.4 billion would still be required to complete them. The Chief Minister said that he have spared an amount of Rs 73.3 billion from the non-development expenditures which he would try to utilize them for completion of development schemes.
The meeting was told that the federal government was supposed to release Rs665.1 billion during the current financial year but the provincial government has received so far only Rs 390.2 billion upto March 2019. In such financial conditions the provincial government through financial management was carrying on its development works all over Sindh. He directed Chairman P&D Mohammad Waseem to get all the schemes of underpasses, flyover and roads going on in the city completed by June 2019. “In the next budget we would launch more schemes for urban and rural areas,” he said.
Chairing another meeting, Murad Ali Shah said that he was committed to refund Rs 7.21 billion from the FBR which it had deducted at source from Account No.1 of the Sindh government. Minister Excise & Taxation Mukesh Kumar Chawla briefing the chief minister said that his team has held a number of meetings with FBR and now another decisive meeting was fixed on Monday.
Secretary Excise Raheem Shaikh and his team would hold a meeting with FBR member who is coming from Islamabad on Monday and would reconcile the figures on which dispute has been cropped up and resulted in at source deductions from Sindh government’s account. Once these figures are reconciled the FBR would accept Sindh government’s claim of refund of Rs 7.21 billion, Mr Chawla told the chief minister.