PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) presented its fifth and final budget for the financial year 2017-18 on Wednesday.
KP Finance Minister Muzaffar Said presented the provincial budget in the KP Assembly, which met under the chair of speaker Asad Qaiser.
"We found all institutions and departments in disarray when we took over the government," said Said.
Opposition parties objected to the finance minister’s presentation of the budget, with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MPA Aurangzeb Nalotha saying the minister is accused in the Bank of Khyber scandal and thus should not be on the floor of the House. He suggested the minister of local government or the chief minister to present the budget.
Chief Minister Pervez Khattak rejected the allegations, saying the minister is not an accused in the case.
Earlier, the provincial cabinet, headed by the chief minister, finalised the budget recommendations.
The annual budget, with a total outlay of Rs603 billion, allocates Rs208 billion for development schemes.
The finance minister informed that a sum of Rs49.4 billion has been earmarked for health related projects, Rs127.9 billion for the education sector and Rs29.7 billion for the provincial police. He noted that the health budget represents a 31% increase from the outgoing fiscal year's budget.
Following in the footprints of other provinces and the federal government, the KP government also decided to announce an increase of 10 to 15 percent in the salaries and pensions of the government employees.
The mainstay of the provincial budgetary vision, the Annual Development Programme (ADP), pitched Rs208 billion, which also includes Rs82 billion foreign project assistance.
The province’s own-resource component of the ADP would be Rs126 billion. The foreign project assistance amounting to Rs82 billion would also include the soft and low mark-up loans of Rs52.55 billion.
The ADP will cover a total of 1,631 projects, including 1,182 ongoing and only 449 new ones.Over 80 percent of the development funds would be allocated for the ongoing projects through which, the government claims, sufficient relief would be provided to the masses.
The loans would be utilised for funding about 74 projects in different sectors including agriculture, education, health, roads and mass transit system in Peshawar.Like all previous development budgets, the incumbent government’s project of the mass transit system in Peshawar is also going to be reflected in its final development initiative.
The “Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation” will also continue under which 200 million saplings would be grown while 120 million saplings would be distributed to the rural organisations for plantation.
Another ambitious project of the provincial government, Zamoong Kor, would also be replicated as an autonomous institution to cater to the education and other career-management needs of the orphans and street children across the province.
An amount of Rs460 million has been allocated for the Social Welfare and Women Empowerment Department project under which Special Education Complexes would be built in Charsadda and Mardan.
The social sector, particularly health and education, will get significant focus in the development plan for 2017-18. The provincial government is going to set aside Rs12 billion for 101projects of the health department that include 75 ongoing schemes for which Rs9.96 billion has been allocated while Rs2.3 billion has been allocated for 26 new healthcare projects.
About 47,000 patients would get free treatment for tuberculosis (TB). The 1,300 cancer patients will also get free treatment. Moreover, the government has also planned to recruit 3,900 lady health workers for better service delivery.
The Insaf Health Card system will be extended to the entire province and about 1.8 million registered families would get Rs30,000 per member at the secondary care level and Rs250,000 per member at the tertiary care level treatment at the government and government-designated hospitals.
The government has set aside Rs14 billion for 77 schemes of the primary and secondary education, while Rs6.3 billion would be spent on 64 projects in the higher education sector.