Balochistan Budget: Juggling expenses.

Byline: Nasir Jamal

PUBLIC investment in social and economic infrastructure development is the most important tool a provincial government can wield to boost economic growth for alleviating poverty and creating jobs. But it is observed that Balochistan has not been able to make any noticeable progress in mitigating widespread poverty despite a substantial rise in its budget allocations for development post 7th National Finance Commission (NFC) award.

Balochistan, for example, has almost doubled its budget allocations for the annual public sector development programme (PSDP) from Rs54.5 billion in 2015-16 to Rs108.1bn for the present financial year. Even the revised estimates for the provincial development programme show a spike of more than 62 per cent to Rs81.9bn, yet this growth in funds is not complemented with improvement in the social and economic outcomes in the province. Instead, we have seen the province's development throw-forward spike to Rs288.9bn at the close of the previous fiscal year in June 2019.

There are a number of factors that have contributed to the increased inefficiencies in public development investments: lack of institutional or departmental capacity to implement schemes, different political lobbies exerting pressure on the government to fund schemes with little or no economic benefit, an underdeveloped private sector, rampant corruption and wastage of funds, and so on.

To improve the efficiency of its development expenditure and increase its impact on provincial, social and economic infrastructure, the Jam Mir Jamal Kamal Khan Alyani government has now finalised a draft Balochistan Comprehensive Development Strategy, which will provide the legal and regulatory framework for the development of the province and help the government gradually move towards medium- and long-term planning. 'The strategy will help the government in allocating resources according to the targets set during provincial development planning,' provincial finance secretary Noorul Haq Baloch told this correspondent last week.

Additionally, the government is also working on finalising sector plans for education, industries, mines, agriculture, livestock, local government, women development and energy. These sector plans comprising provincial policies and strategies will be used in the preparation of the annual development plan. The provincial planning and development department has developed the Balochistan Planning and Development Manual in order...