Finance Minister briefs senior officers about KP Govt reforms, projects

PESHAWAR, Nov 11 (APP):A delegation of more than 233 officers including Pakistan Armed Forces Officers, Grade 20 CSS Officers and Senior Military Officers from friendly countries headed by Major General Inayat Hussian Chief Instructor of National Defense University (NDU) visited Peshawar as part of their inland study tour to provincial capitals.

To brief the delegation of NDU about KP government performance and other provincial matters a presentation was arranged at Chief Minister’s Secretariat Peshawar. KP Finance Minister, Taimur Saleem Jhagra briefed the delegates.

In his opening remarks, the Finance minister said no government since 1970 general elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been a single party government, and no government has been reelected until 2018.

The people of KP gave a second chance to the single party government of Tehreek e Insaf on the basis of performance, where people experienced major improvement in province in six areas including Education, Health, Police Reforms, Billion Tree Tsunami project, service delivery and eliminating political interference and implementing merit policy, he added.

While highlighting the performance of the incumbent provincial government Taimur Jhagra said that 2018 government faced two challenges, beating the bar we set ourselves in previous tenure and swimming against the financial tide.

Commenting on the provincial economy, the finance minister stated that 92 per cent of provincial receipts came from the federal government. “We are taking pragmatic steps to increase the
provincial revenue generation by introducing reforms and developmental initiatives in the tourism, mines and mineral and energy sector,” he said.

The minister said we completely revamped our development budget, with record allocations to key sectors that will develop the Pakhtunkhwa economy, he elaborated how the government had focused on development by cutting government expenditures and diverting those funds to development.

“We looked inwards, transforming revenue performance, with a 49% increase in non-telecom revenue in the last year part of a five-year effort to make provincial revenue surpass Rs. 100 billion,” he added.

He said that we were able to cut expenditures by Rs 95 billion and allocated it for development. Also, Rs 203 billion left from the budgets was reinvested back and as a result KP had the largest development budget in the province history, which was bigger than Sindh and equaled the development budget of Punjab.

“We took and pushed hard but necessary decisions, such as increasing the retirement age, which results in an average saving of Rs.20 billion per year.” It helps the government raise the require awareness around civil service reforms and it provide impetus to look deeper into how incentives are built for performance.”

“We have also pushed several initiatives that will help the economy in parallel by developing the Rashakai Special Economic Zone, first project for implementation of industrial cooperation under CPEC in Pakhtunkhwa in collaboration with China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC),” he maintained.

The minister further said huge allocation had been made for uplift of schools, hospitals, generating livelihood opportunities and development of infrastructure and communication channels in the province.

“We have managed to successfully integrate ex-FATA, with a need to now accelerate implementation. Successful integration of tribal districts with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was a daunting challenge for
the provincial government. Seventy years of inadequate laws and persistent security challenges for the past decades had left the tribal districts without any sort of development infrastructure and
facilities,” he said.

Taimur jhagra said government had stood up to the challenge and made the merger a success by extending the jurisdiction of provincial departments
and conducting successful provincial assembly elections to due representation in the provincial government.

The most ambitious budget and development plan ever for the tribal districts with a total outlay of Rs. 162 billion( up from 55 billion last year),including Rs 59 billion for the first year of ten year of development plan and Rs 83 billion overall for development.

He said creation of 17,000, new jobs in government, in the process of being recruited, along with successful integration of the Levies and Khasadar forces into Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Police. The roll-out of health insurance for every family, and therefore every citizen of ex-Fata, and the inauguration of the Insaf Rozgar Scheme to invest Rs. 2 billion in loans to the youth of merged districts, for which Rs.1 billion has been earmarked in 2019-20.

In addition to this Rs.4 billion has been earmarked for the rest of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the same scheme, he maintained. He said KP government has released more than 70 million for operationalization of Torkham Border round the clock to promote trade and commerce in the region and establish Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as a transit route to central Asian countries.

The Prime Minister has paid more than five visits, 10 visits by the chief minister and 50 plus ministerial visits to merged districts, he said. He said KP has introduced Universal Health Coverage in Pakistan and easy accessible loans for everyone, especially youth, and we continue to enact a set of reforms that will actually transform governance and the impact that people see. “We are committed to make Peshawar and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa a hub for regional trade and commerce, the minister concluded.

The Finance minister was accompanied by Information Minister Shoukat Yousaf Zai and secretaries from various departments, who responded to questions from the participants on the performance and future planning of the government.