Finance Minister of Balochistan has reportedly boycotted Annual Plan Co-ordination Committee (APCC) meeting on Friday in protest against less allocation for the Province in Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) for the next fiscal year.
Sources said that the delegation from Sindh also strongly protested against deletion of provincial schemes from National Highway Authority (NHA) and for not consulting in the budget making process. The APPC was convened to finalise the PSDP of federal and provincial governments for the next fiscal year. Finance Minister and Finance Secretary of Balochistan reportedly said that transfer of departments without their allocated resources after the 18th Constitutional have added Rs 25 billion extra burden on the province.
The Balochistan Finance Minister was also quoted as saying that it seems that APCC is merely a photo session for Balochistan delegation and all the process of PSDP is nothing else but a 'drama' for the province. They said that out of Rs 280 billion federal PSDP, only Rs 29 billion is for Balochistan which is not acceptable to them. They complained that this was being done intentionally.
They were reportedly walked out of the meeting after attending it just for 40 minutes, saying that Balochistan is being pushed against the wall. Sources said that representative of Sindh Province have not gone to the extent of boycotting the meeting but lodged protest against decrease in federal PSDP share from 12 to 9%. They said that Sindh government was not consulted at any stage in the budget making process. Moreover, their viewpoint was that the ongoing projects of the devolved ministries should be the responsibility of the federal government.