Provinces asked to chip in Rs110bn for uplift of tribal regions, DHQ hospitals.

Byline: Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD -- The centre on Monday asked the provinces to jointly allocate Rs110 billion in their respective budgets next year to finance special development of the tribal regions and health sector upgradation in line with the National Finance Commission (NFC) shares.

Speaking at a news conference, Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar said that China has agreed to take up matters relating to Independent Power Producers (IPPS) under the bilateral mechanism. He further added that the so-called debt rescheduling to Pakistan by G-20 countries did not provide any financial benefit to the country.

He explained that G-20 rescheduling would not provide any financial benefit to Pakistan because it would be net present value (NPV) neutral and the loan repayments would be delayed for 18 months. After that, the interest for these 18 months would also accrue on total outstanding and become payable. He said the loan deferral would, however, be beneficial to the extent that cash flows would be delayed.

Covid-19 scheme

The minister said the federal government had allocated in the next year budget Rs70bn multi-purpose scheme for Covid-19 responsive projects and wanted to spend Rs50bn out of this for special health sector projects across the country on matching basis. He said the provinces had been asked to provide a matching amount of Rs50bn for this initiative to upgrade all District Headquarter Hospitals (DHQs).

Centre to provide matching grant for initiatives

With this Rs100bn amount, this would be the country's largest-ever health sector initiative to upgrade district hospitals to a level that patients do not need to rush to big cities for lack of health facilities and overburden big hospitals as was seen recently in the case of Covid-19 patients. He said the matter had been discussed with the provinces.

The minister said the entire national leadership of the country had promised about two years ago to jointly spend Rs100bn every year for next 10 years on development of tribal districts now merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in addition to their usual annual development allocations. He said the initiative took off with a lapse of about a year and current year about Rs24-25bn could be spent under this head and had to be increased to Rs60bn next year.

He said he had taken up the issue at the NFC level last year that all the stakeholders should provide funds according to their respective share. He said the...