ISLAMABAD: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed serious concerns over the provincial governments for not giving desired surplus budget to the federal government during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, well informed sources told the scribe
The sources in the Finance Ministry said that the visiting IMF mission led by Mission Chief Nathan Porter has held a meeting with the representatives of the four provinces today in Islamabad.
The visiting IMF Mission expressed their reservations over the non compliance on the condition to give surplus budget to the federal government by the provinces.
The provinces had given commitment to give surplus budget Rs1.2 trillion (equal to one percent of GDP) during the current fiscal year.
Under this commitment, the provincial governments were supposed to provide surplus budget of Rs342 billion to the federal government during the first three months of the current fiscal year.
Contrary to the assigned target of Rs342 billion, the provincial governments missed the assigned target and collectively gave net surplus budget Rs160 billion primarily due to high expenditures of the Punjab Government.
Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz led Punjab Govt. did not bother about the target and gave deficit budget of Rs160 billion during the first quarter of the current fiscal year.
The Federal government and IMF were supposing that the province will gave surplus budget of around Rs140 billion during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, source said.
The IMF was told that the Sindh government has provided surplus budget of Rs.130 billion, KP govt. gave Rs103 billion and Baluchistan government provided Rs85 billion to the federal government, source said.
The provinces shared the data regarding the public spending on social sectors and development activities. The Mission raised questions over low spending on social sectors in the small provinces.
The delegation was informed that vacant posts in the provincial health and education departments in the KP were main reason of low spending.
Sources said that the provincial governments informed that they missed the target of spending on development budget.
They said that the spending on development schemes remained low during the first quarter of the current fiscal year due to many reasons.
However, they will try to achieve the target of development spending by spending more during the next quarter.
IMF also questioned wheat procurement at the provincial level and solar policy, sources
