Daily Times

The Sindh government has allocated Rs284.5 billion for provincial Annual Development Plan (ADP) for the next fiscal (2019-20), against Rs343.9 billion budget estimates and Rs172.9 billion revised estimates for the current fiscal year. Chief Minister of Sindh Murad Ali Shah presented the budget 2019-20, in the provincial assembly, on Friday. The actual size of the provincial ADP for next fiscal is Rs208 billion, and after adding Rs51.2 billion in the foreign project as assistance (FPA), federal grants of Rs41 billion and district ADP of Rs 20 billion, the total outlay comes to round Rs284.5 billion.

Syed Murad Ali Shah, who also holds the provincial finance minister portfolio, complained about reducing the development expenditure to Rs172.9 billion from budget estimates of Rs343.9 billion owing to lesser transfers from the federal government. Consequently, many development schemes could not be taken up while others have been delayed due to non-availability of funds.

In the budget 15 percent salary and pension for government employees have been increased. It is a larger increase than that in the budgets of the federal government, Punjab, KPK and Balochistan. The raise will be applicable to all grades of employees of Sindh, and the PPP government will get the benefit of this salary increase in future.

To boost education in the province, the government has proposed to end examination and enrollment fees for matriculation and intermediate students. The province has also proposed an allocation of funds for construction of two small dams to resolve the problem of water shortage in Karachi.

Sindh will receive five billion rupees from the federal government, and Rs51.14 billion from external sources, for its development works.

The thrust of the Sindh budget also seems to be on current expenditures, going by a comparison of budgeted development spending from last year to this year, again in contrast to Punjab that has kept current expenditures restrained, and invested its resources in an expansion of development spending. Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah attributes this to lower transfers from the centre under the NFC award, but there are reasons to be sceptical of this claim. The provincial government has different priorities that are better served through current spending instead.

Many development schemes could not be taken up while others have been delayed due to non-availability of funds

On the development side, there is continued focus on building and construction for new resources that are going into the education sector, and very little on pedagogy, teacher training and software of public education. A brick-and-mortar approach to building state capacity is still the main thrust of the budget. Continued allocations for public transport in Karachi show that the government is serious about the bus lines it is intending to build. But no major shift in strategy or spending or revenue priorities is in evidence. To top it all, the province has not restrained its expectation of transfers from the centre for the next fiscal year, despite strong demands from the federal government to run large surpluses this year to help it with its deficit-containment strategy. Punjab has obliged but Sindh appears indifferent. In the year ahead, this is likely to emerge as a bone of contention, because given the shape of things transfers to the provinces will probably come under greater strain. The budget shows it will be business as usual next year.

Despite the federal government’s decision to take over three major hospitals in Karachi, the Sindh government has announced to run the hospitals, allocating Rs15 billion for the same.

During the post-budget briefing, Chief Minister Shah said, “We have filed a review petition in the Supreme Court. The notification issued by the federal government to take over the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and National Institute of Child Health (NICH) has no legal value.

The court has clearly given directives to the federal government to first compensate the Sindh government for its investment in the hospitals. The federal government cannot run these facilities until payment has been made to the Sindh government. The federal government has not allocated a single penny for these hospitals. It is easy to issue a notification sitting in Islamabad, but it is difficult to run the affairs of these public hospitals.

The Sindh government has made a significant investment in the three health facilities, and some more projects are in the pipeline. I would like to give the example of NICVD when the federal government handed it over to the Sindh government after the 18th Amendment. At that time, in 2011-12, the allocation for NICVD was Rs355 million, and that’s has been enhanced to Rs8.8 billion in 2018-19.

In the Sindh budget, Rs52 billion has been announced for Karachi; the government has allocated Rs36 billion for the city in the ADP, and a further Rs16 billion would be borrowed from foreign project assistants.

The provincial government has allocated Rs12.3 billion for the Social Protection and Poverty Reduction Programme in the development part of the budget 2019-20. Under this, there will be a focus on three major interventions: People’s Poverty Reduction Programme, Poverty Reduction Strategy and Social Protection.

The Sehwan and Jamshoro road, which has become notorious because of frequent accidents, was estimated at around Rs14 billion. Sindh has already released its share of seven billion rupees, but the federal government is unwilling to release the rest of the amount. In the current PSDP, only two billion rupees have been allocated for the road, an insufficient amount looking at the number of passengers travelling in that area.

The writer is a retired doctor of the Sindh Health Department