The Annual Plan Coordination Committee (APCC) on Thursday proposed the size of the national development outlay at Rs 1.837 trillion, with provincial contribution of Rs 912 billion.
The decision was made at a meeting of the Annual Plan Coordination Committee (APCC) held under the chairmanship of Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar.
During the meeting, the stakeholders were informed about the underlying priorities of the development framework, and the Ministry of Planning presented the federal public sector development programme (PSDP) for 2019-20, with an allocation of Rs 675 billion. He said that recognising the critical role of the private sector, public-private partnership, build operate transfer (BoT) and other modes would be utilised.
Initially, innovative financing of infrastructure projects with an allocation of Rs 250 billion was presented to enhance the role of the private sector through relevant government departments. Infrastructure continued to be the largest sector, but social sector was also given importance according to the government priorities.
The meeting decided to give special importance to backward and remote areas, especially Balochistan, southern Punjab, rural Sindh and southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) have been provided sufficient resources required for their completion as per schedule.
Speaking on the occasion, Bakhtyar highlighted the performance of the economy amidst backlog of serious macroeconomic imbalances. He reaffirmed the commitment of the government for balanced and equitable development.
He informed the participants about the challenging adjustment process, which was constraining expanding development portfolio. However, the government was optimising economic returns by investing in projects with high socio-economic return, he said. Giving broader outlines of next financial year’s PSDP, Bakhtyar said that this would be the incumbent government’s first development portfolio under serious budgetary constraints. Even then new important areas, including climate change, clean & green Pakistan, knowledge economy, human resource development, agriculture growth and regional equalisation development programme would be given priority, besides harnessing full socioeconomic potential of the CPEC, the minister said. He said the growth strategy of the government was to create more opportunities for the poor and vulnerable segments, and support regional equalisation.
The minister highlighted that previous government mismanaged the PSDP 2018-19 in the last year of its term by adding 393 projects with a throw-forward of Rs 2 trillion, which was 33 percent of the total throw-forward against a meagre allocation of Rs 55 billion.
During the meeting, the Ministry of Planning gave an overview of the performance of the economy in current fiscal year and macroeconomic targets for FY 2019-20.
The participants were informed that the government was making concerted efforts to stabilise the economy to correct structural imbalances and enhance long-term growth potential.
After giving a broad overview of the development framework, detailed discussion was held with individual ministries. The audience were told that provincial priorities were already reflected in the PSDP through extensive consultative process with the provincial and regional governments.
The meeting decided to formulate a coordination committee under the planning secretary, with representation from all provinces. The proposed committee would make monthly review of ongoing projects, releases and operational difficulties, whereas quarterly review would be conducted by the minister.
