By Sabihuddin Ghausi
KARACHI, June 27: With a mega-size cabinet of more than four dozen members, the Balochistan government is facing political pressures, resource constraints and physical and social infrastructure demands.
The province is almost half of Pakistan, with a tiny population that is widely scattered, and is in need of capital-intensive development schemes for logistics, education, health, business operations and what not.
For the next fiscal year 2008-09, beginning from July, the Balochistan government is taking up implementation of Rs15.74 billion development plan which has a built-in deficit of Rs8.30 billion.
Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has promised a Rs3 billion special grant, but it remains a tentative possibility and hence has not been shown in the provincial budget as an income.
Balochistan Finance Minister Mir Asim Kurd, however, in his budget speech on June 21 said that release of this amount would reduce budget deficit from Rs8.30 billion to Rs5.30 billion.
The planners in Balochistan government want to complete 300 plus development schemes in the next fiscal year so that they could bring down the development budget from the existing Rs34 billion to a level which is manageable for them.
“Completion of schemes in larger durations has its own consequences,’’ said Ahmed Baksh Lehri, Additional Chief Secretary and boss of planning in Balochistan, adding, “planning and development in Balochistan is not an enviable task where resource constraints are an unending problem and there is no end to mounting political pressures from a coalition.”
Groaning under an overdraft of Rs19 billion from the State Bank of Pakistan, for which it was made to pay penalty at the rate of four per cent every year till it was converted into a soft loan last year, Balochistan started the year 2007-08 in a very difficult condition.
It announced a development outlay of Rs13 billion with Rs10 billion deficits, but it ended up spending Rs10.8 billion and completed 226 development schemes. The throw forward was brought down from Rs37 billion to Rs34 billion.
Balochistan carries a huge backlog of development task. It emerged as a province in 1970 on Pakistan map. Before getting a provincial status, Balochistan was an administrative unit controlled by the executive.
For those who were given task to control Balochistan from 1947 to 1970, their focus was Quetta.
Sui gas was discovered in early 50s and that sustained Pakistan’s economy, but Balochistan remained out of the agenda of planners of the federal government when it operated from Karachi or from Islamabad.
“After getting status as a province in 1970, Balochistan started with a development budget which was less than Jinnah Hospital, Karachi,” Lehri informed with a sarcastic smile.
As he recalled, the first-ever university of the province was established in 1971 in a college building. Few more colleges were added, primary school buildings were established “but the donor driven ideas caused serious gaps in the educational system.”
There was no end to woes and troubles for Balochistan after it emerged as a province. The four-year bloody war from 1973 to 1977 left deep scars on Balochistan’s economy and social conditions.
Rolling of Soviet tanks in Kabul sometimes in 1979 or so launched the big game in the region. There was an unending influx of Afghans. It changed the socio-economic and even moral fabric of traditional Baloch secularism and chivalry.
Balochistan emerged as a hub of drug trade and gun-running on international highway. How the planners in the federal government were looking at Balochistan when all these troubles were taking place.
In 1970, the federal government provided only Rs90 million for development budget to Balochistan. This was reduced to Rs62 million in 1971-72. It was Rs120.50 million in 1972-73. It was only Rs344 million in 1977-78. It was in 1985-86 that Balochistan got Rs938 million and Rs1.17 billion in 1986-87.
In 1991-92 when provinces were given for the first time right on their natural resources, Balochistan development budget soared to Rs4.40 billion but were scaled down for four years.
“In last 37 years, total development investment in Balochistan had been only Rs150 billion,’’ Mehfooz Ali Khan, the Balochistan Finance Secretary, revealed.
Not only that bureaucrats and politicians are unhappy on federal government’s attitude towards Balochistan, but the businessmen are also critical of Islamabad’s indifferent approach.
“Logistics is the key issue for expansion of business in this province,” Khalifa Tahir, a former president of Balochistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said.
He blamed the federal government for applying a criterion worked out for densely populated Punjab and NWFP on Balochistan.
“A stretch of a mile road in the Punjab or NWFP may service about 10,000 persons,” Khalifa Tahir argued who said perhaps a 100-mile stretch of road in Balochistan may connect two villages with about 20 to 40 houses.
“We don’t have an I. I. Chundrigar Road where we can provide jobs to thousands in Balochistan in a small cluster,” Mehfooz Ali Khan, the Finance Secretary, said. Here, he said the government would have to invest many times more than in Sindh, Punjab or NWFP.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/06/28/ebr1.htm |
