Khyber Pakhtunkhwas (KP) Finance adviser, Muzammil Aslam, said Saturday that the federal government ignores the province due to political opposition.
Aslam, who treated a press conference after the budget, said the economic attitude of the federal government is no longer stable with the growth rate falling to 2.7%.
He claimed that KP was largely ignored in the federal development budget and received only RS550 million, forcing the province to increase its own development costs due to lack of federal support.
Aslam said the province achieved 93% of its income targets through its own sources.
However, KP received RS90 billion less than its share under the National Finance Commission (NFC). He added that the provincial government spent RS20 billion from its own treasury to tribal areas and used RS70 billion for the merged districts without any federal support.
He clarified that the province had taken no new loans. The loans currently received were from agreements signed earlier. Any future loans, he said, would only be taken for major development projects.
Compared to the budgets, Aslam noted that the center’s budget is on RS1 trillion, while K-P’s are RS547 billion. He said an NFC meeting was scheduled for August following KP’s request.
The Minister of the KP, he said, raised the question of pending charges with the center, which had promised payments. Despite this, he said, annual funds that exceeded RS47 billion were never released by the federal government of tribal areas.
Aslam acknowledged that the center had for the first time awarded RS70.4 billion to the merged tribal districts. He clarified that RS170 billion in loan was inherited from previous governments.
A fund with RS1.5 billion had been reduced to control debt repayments. He said the province is happy with its NFC proportion and sees it as the key to solving his tax challenges.
Wages and pensions, he said, has been increased by 10% and 7% in line with federal adjustments respectively.
For the new financial year, the KP government has included development schemes worth RS500 billion in its RS195 billion development budget.
This year, RS145 billion out of the awarded RS156 billion to the Districts were already released. For merged tribal areas, RS41 billion was allocated with RS26.9 billion paid.
He described it as the biggest development budget in KP’s history. “When we took office, the threw commitments stretched over 10 years-they have now been reduced to 5.1 years,” he concluded.
