KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that despite shortfall in federal transfers the provincial government was trying to carry out development activities.
Presiding over a meeting to reviewing fiscal position of the province Friday, he said that they would spare an amount of Rs73.3 billion from e non-development expenditures to be utilized for completion of development schemes.
The meeting was told that the total outlay of the provincial budget was Rs1124 billion against which total expenditures of Rs1,1445 billion have been estimated. It meant there was a shortfall of Rs20.5billion.
Secretary Finance told the chief minister that there were Rs773.2 billion non-development expenditures. However, the chief minister approved a deduction of Rs73.2 billion and fixed non-development expenditures at Rs700 billion.
Chairman PandD 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 Rs42.7 billion against which Rs34.9 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 Rs7.8 billion so that these schemes could be completed.
Waseem said that there were 451 priority schemes of Rs73.3 billion against which 29.1 billion have been released and Rs11 billion are yet to be released. The chief minister said that he would try to arrange Rs11 billion for completion of the priority schemes.
The chief minister was also told that there were 804 fast moving schemes of Rs74.3 billion against which Rs50.9 billion have been released and Rs23.4 billion would still be required to complete them.
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 Rs390.2 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 PandD 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.
However, chairing another meeting, the chief minister said that he was committed to refund Rs7.21 billion from the FBR which it had deducted at source from Account No.1 of the Sindh government.
Minister Excise and Taxation Mukesh Kumar Chawla briefing the chief minister said that his team has already 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 Rs7.21 billion, Mr Chawla told the chief minister.
The chief minister directed Excise and Taxation Minister to keep him posting day to day progress of the meeting with FBR; otherwise, he would adopt legal procured.