Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party PPP led Sindh remains far behind in terms of government’s performance while PML-N in Punjab emerges as leader in governance whereas Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf PTI is fast catching up with Punjab, reveals a research report released here on Wednesday.

Provincial Tracking Report 2016-2017 released by Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME) is based on the news published and data collected from the websites of the relevant ministries of provincial governments.

The report entails economic performance of three provinces, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa KP, Punjab and Sindh by tracking the progress made on the implementation of economic manifesto announced by the parties in power in respective provinces, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party-Parliamentarians (PPP-P).

The report labeled as “Government Policy Scorecard” is compiled by political economist, Dr Khalil Ahmad, has given marks/score against the performance of respective provincial governments in different sectors.

According to the scorecard in Education and Health sectors PTI led KP government is leading in Education sector with 6 points out of total 10 points while Punjab obtained 5.77 and Sindh received only 3.58 points which shows Sindh government’s performance in the two much talked about social sectors remains dismal, stands nowhere in the race.

However, Sindh’s performance in Agriculture and Livestock sector was much better and remained above KP (3.5) and Punjab (4.5) on scorecard with 5.14 points.

In housing and governance Punjab scored highest 7 points in each sector while KP received 5.5 and 6.5 points respectively. Sindh’s performance in housing sector was much better as compared to other sectors which received 5 points but report did not mention the much sought after governance scorecard which amazing was “not available”.

In transport sector the Punjab leads with 6.5 points while performance of Sindh and KP remains same with 4 points. However, in taxation/resource utilization Sindh remained far behind with scoring only 2 points but the performance of other provinces, KP and Punjab, was not much satisfactory as they 2.5 and 2.75 points respectively which reflects lip service only.

The “scorecard” shows that the Sindh government remained insensitive to the development and did not improve its performance which is evident from a similar report which was released in 2014 when KP had scored 3.82 points and Sindh 3.31 points while Punjab managed to score 4.6 points. However, the current report shows improvement of average rating of provinces with KP to 4.69 points and Punjab 5.45 points while Sindh scored was little changed to 3.71 points. PML-N’s performance may be judged better than PTI and far better than PPP.

The report says that ” It may be noted that as far as their own social agenda is concerned , PTI, PMLN and PPP, all of the three , whatever they have accomplished up to now, its seems they have achieved nothing substantial. That’s the limitation of social agenda pursued in isolation”.

As matter of fact , in addition to their social agenda , what they urgently require to focus on are the chronic issues of governance , such as maintenance of law and order , provision of prompt justice , reforms of state services and delivery mechanism , police reforms and long term economic reforms, the report suggested.

Speaking on the occasion Dr Khalil Ahmad said that the “Economic Agenda” of PTI seems to be overwhelmed with education and health. “As far as “Economic Agenda” of the PML-N being implemented in Punjab is concerned, it is not much different from the Tehreek-e-Insaf’s in KP and Peoples Party’s in Sindh. It is as much a Social Agenda as is theirs”, he added.

In case of Balochistan, the report includes a commentary on the socio-economic status of the province instead of following any manifesto because of a mid-term change in the government. The purpose of the Provincial Tracking Report is to initiate and inform policy dialogue and public debate on the progress made by political parties vis-à-vis their electoral promises.