Eight months of FY17: Sindh given less money from divisible pool

The Sindh government has received Rs252.8 billion against Rs328.8 billion from the federal divisible pool during the last eight months. Presiding over a joint meeting of P&D and finance department on Wednesday, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah directed his planning, development and finance teams to prepare proposals for new annual development programme and the next budget.
The chairman of the P&D, Mohammad Waseem, and Secretary of Finance Hassan Naqvi attended the meeting with their teams.
Hassan Naqvi, briefing the chief minister on the federal transfers during the current financial year, said that the Centre had committed itself to Rs493.2 billion against revenue assignments to Sindh. Releases of the last eight months come to Rs328.8 billion, against which the provincial government has received only Rs252.8 billion, and that shows a shortfall of Rs76.2 billion.
He said that the Centre had committed itself to provision of Rs54.7 billion in straight transfers to Sindh. The eight months share of Sindh comes to Rs36.4 billion, against which the receipts are Rs36.6 billion.
Referring to the OZT share of Rs13.3 billion, Hassan Naqvi said that the eight months share of Sindh is Rs8.8 billion, but the Centre has released only Rs6.8 billion, which shows a shortfall of Rs2 billion. At this the chief minister directed the Secretary of Finance to talk to the federal finance secretary and get the remaining amount released.
He directed him to collect the provincial receipts, so that necessary preparation for the next budget could be made.
Giving guidelines for the next budget, the chief minister said that it will be public-friendly, and focused on subjects such as education, health, irrigation, public health and engineering-in short public sectors will be given priority. The on-going schemes would be given more funds so that they could be completed.
P&D chairman Mohammad Waseem said that special education has an allocation of Rs213 million, against which the government has released Rs47.993 million, but the expenditures are zero. Similarly, the forests and wildlife department has also failed to utilise the Rs330.9 million allocated to it. Information technology and some other departments have also failed to spend their allocated funds.
The chief minister directed the chief secretary to seek explanation from the departments which failed to utilize the funds.