K-IV water project wrapped up in 2018 on PM's order, says Murad.

Byline: Tahir Siddiqui

KARACHI -- Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah disclosed on Thursday that K-IV, a joint megaproject of the provincial and federal governments meant to augment Karachi's daily water supply, was wrapped up in 2018 on the directive of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

'It was said that there was serious corruption in the project, but no corruption has so far been proven,' he said, blaming the prime minister for the inordinate delay in the completion of the project.

Replying to questions during his post-budget press conference, Mr Shah said the federal government had decided to terminate the K-IV project. 'He (PM) left after ordering the termination of the project in 2018 on allegations of corruption, but no corruption has surfaced in the past two years,' he said.

Criticising the federal government, the chief minister said that in 2018-19, for the first time in the country's history, the tax collection had fallen shorter than the previous year, and now again 2019-20 witnessed a shortfall in collection than the previous year. 'This would be history in which collection would be less than the last years,' he said.

He said the Federal Board of Revenue had collected Rs3.1 trillion in nine months against a target of Rs5.5tr. 'I don't know whether they (federal government) would be able to collect the targeted amount in the next three months,' he said and added that the federal government was blaming the coronavirus pandemic for its inefficiency in revenue collection.

Bilawal lauds increase in salaries of govt employees in Sindh budget

The chief minister said that the federal government told Sindh that it would receive Rs835 billion against which Sindh was receiving Rs606bn.

He compared a shortfall of Rs229bn in terms of federal transfers to the province as a 'dacoity bid' and said that the province had to suffer financial losses due to inefficiencies of the PTI-led federal government. 'As per my analysis, they collected just over Rs3 trillion in nine months of the outgoing fiscal year, when there was no coronavirus,' he said, adding that even by going beyond the expectation, collection in the last three months if there was no Covid-19, could have missed the targets by some Rs500bn.

Quoting the World Bank, Mr Shah said that Pakistan's growth in 2020 would be -2.6 per cent and in 2021 it would be -0.2pc.

The chief minister said that the GDP growth of the country was left at 5.2pc by the previous government of the Pakistan Muslim...

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