Rs 352.3 billion Balochistan budget 2018-19 unveiled
Rs 352.3 billion Balochistan budget 2018-19 unveiled
Haseeb ur Rehman
Lead

QUETTA:-The Balochistan Government has unveiled Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the financial year 2018-19 allocated Rs. 88.3 billion for the province and announced to give top priority to education, health, public health engineering and communication sectors.

QUETTA:-The Balochistan Government has unveiled Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the financial year 2018-19 allocated Rs. 88.3 billion for the province and announced to give top priority to education, health, public health engineering and communication sectors.

The Advisor to the Chief Minister of Finance, Dr. Ruquyia Saeed Hashmi while presenting the annual budget for the financial year 2018-19 in the Balochistan Assembly on Monday, said that the present government wanted to allocate maximum funds for the development sector to provide more facilities to the people of the province at their door steps. However, she said that the resources from the Federal government were not indicating according to the needs of Balochistan.

She said that the Rs. 88.3 billion PSDP include Rs. 9.2 billion foreign aid. She said that in the 2018-19 PSDP a total 4728 development were included. She said that out of these total number schemes 3213 schemes are new while 1515 schemes were ongoing as the government wanted to complete ongoing schemes as soon as possible to allocate maximum amount for the new schemes.

Dr. Ruquyia Hashmi said that in the next year’s development budget, the government tired to include collective nature schemes so maximum people and areas could be benefited. She further said that with the measures taken by the provincial government the provincial resources were estimated Rs. 9.6 billion during the financial year 2017.18. She said that the Balochistan government established Balochistan Revenue Authority, which collected taxes of Rs. 5.5 billion in account of GST on services.

According to the budget documents, the Balochistan government has allocated highest amount of Rs. 20193.009 million for the 925 schemes in the communication sector for 567 news schemes and 358 ongoing schemes.  Second highest amount of Rs. 12452.311 million has been allocated in the next Year’s PSDP for the education sector that would be spent on total 654 that include 449 new and 205 ongoing development schemes.

Another amount of Rs.8811. 132 million was allocated for the total 361 development schemes thatinclude269 new and 92 ongoing schemes during the year 2018-19.  The budget documents indicted that Rs. 8648. 738 million for the Public Health Engineering sector to spent total 1009 development schemes which include 921 new and 88 ongoing schemes.

Provincial government decided to give more attraction on the health sector to provide maximum health facilities to the people of Balochistan and has allocated Rs. 7240. 311 million to initiate 172 news development schemes and completing 100 ongoing schemes in the next financial year. Another amount of Rs. 5872.516 million was shown in the PSDP for PPEH sector, which would be spent on 304 total schemers that include 134 new and 170 ongoing schemes.

In the agriculture sector the Balochistan government would spent Rs. 3847.847 million. This amount would be spent on178 development schemes which include116 new and 62 ongoing schemes. For the Urban planning and Development sector RS.

1152. 468 million were indicated in the PSPD that would be spent on 48 development schemes which include 24 each new and ongoing scheme.  Provincial government would spend amount of RS. 2266.661 million on Local bodies’ projects.
For the power sector’s development schemes Rs. 2712.49 million were allocated for 269 development schemes.