Public sector programmes financing: body formed to come out with formula

The government has set up a committee headed by Minister for Finance to come up with a formula how the major public sector programmes will be financed in next fiscal year after the implementation of 18th constitutional amendment.
Secretary Establishment Chaudhry Rauf informed the Senate Standing Committee on Thursday that in the light of recommendations of the implementation committee on 18th constitutional amendment, government has constituted a committee to look into the financing of national development programmes. Minister for Finance Dr Hafeez Sheikh will chair the committee and provincial finance ministers are its members.
The mandate of the committee is to find out a way to finance those national programme which are currently financed under the PSDP and are operated by the ministries. "The meeting of the committee will be called prior to the meeting of cabinet committee to finalise their recommendations on the subject", Chaudhry Rauf said.
In addition, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will himself talk to the chief ministers of all the provinces and discuss with them how to finance the national development programmes after the devolution of ministries.
Secretary Establishment further said that the "clean drinking water for everyone" project has been released Rs 2.5 billion and rest of the amount is to be disbursed on monthly basis till June 2011. "Either federal government will keep rolling funds from PSDP or provinces will arrange rest of the money," he said.
The Senate Standing Committee also discussed a case in which Bank of Punjab refused to refund Rs 670 million guarantee provided by the contractor in one of the project relating to provision of clean drinking water in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The contract was awarded by federal government.
Secretary ED informed the committee that the matter has been brought to the notice of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). Meanwhile, the contractor and Bank of Punjab have assured the government that they would complete rest of the construction work.