Provinces seek PC’s help for more funds

Islamabad: The provincial governments have approached the Planning Commission (PC) for help in formulating a mechanism to allocate more funds than actual cost to development projects due to escalation in prices of the inputs, sources told.

The PC has already set up a committee on the issue, but its progress is very slow due to lack of sharing of information from the Commission by different authorities executing schemes under provincial governments' development plan. The executing authorities of the ongoing schemes are trying to know how the escalated the prices of inputs, like cement, steel, labour, etc, should be accommodated as implementation of projects in actual cost is becoming more and more difficult.

Sindh government had raised the issue with the PC, but latter gave no response to repeated requests in this regard. According to sources, almost all ongoing development schemes are facing the same problem. Sources said the number of ongoing projects is around 1500. The contractors are in serious trouble to cope with the prices of inputs within the actual cost.

They have taken up the issue with the executing agencies (federal and provincial ministries) to include the raise in the total cost of the projects. According to normal procedure, the CDWP is the competent authority to revise the cost of the projects with cost of Rs 500 million. Beyond this limit, the task is done by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec). If this procedure is followed, then the executing agencies will have to wait for the meetings of the two bodies.

Officials said that since the rise in the inputs' prices has become a big constraint, the government had constituted a committee to look into the issue in a different way in order to take development agenda ahead. But the provincial governments are still waiting for proper mechanism to tackle the problem, sources added.