Balochistan Minister for Finance Mir Shoiab Nosherwani on Saturday said that the provincial government has presented a balanced budget, accommodated all sectors and initiated flagship projects to facilitate the poor masses of the province.
Addressing a post-budget press conference here along with Minister for Planning and Development Mir Zahore Buledi, Spokesperson Balochistan Shahid Rind, he said that the government strived hard to satisfy the public and gave top priorities to health, education, climate change, law and order.
Shoaib Nosherwani said that the government has continued around 1500 pending schemes of public interest and the tendering process would kick off from the first week of the new financial year. He said with efforts of the Chief Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti, the federal government has included 16 schemes of Balochistan in the federal public sector development program 2024-25.
He said that a huge part of provincial income consists of federal transfers and provincial receipts are the main part of their economic resources which include distributable pool and direct transfer as formula decided under NFC.
He said the total budget for the fiscal year is Rs 955.6 billion, in which the total share of federal transfer is Rs 726.6 billion and the total share of provincial revenues is Rs124.4 billion. The contribution of foreign project assistance is Rs 17.9 billion.
The minister said that the total expenditure estimated for the next financial year 2024-25 is Rs 930.2 billion, in which the total volume of current expenditure is Rs 564.8 billion and the capital expenditure is estimated at Rs 22.1 billion, while the total volume of the development budget is Rs 321 billion, in which the total of the provincial PSDP is Rs 219.5 billion.
He said apart from this, 28.2 billion rupees are expected in the form of Foreign Project Assistance (FPA) in the next financial year, while the share of Federal Development Projects (Outside PSDP) is 73.2 billion rupees.
The minister said that when the incumbent provincial government in view of economic challenges and financial difficulties, had reviewed the provincial development programme during the current fiscal year, which included 9788 schemes with a total proposed cost of Rs 229.3 billion, out of which 5068 new schemes and 4720 ongoing schemes were included.
He said that for the first time in the history of the province, their government has taken important steps through reforms in which a significant amount of funds has been allocated for the implementation of public services through the provincial non-developmental budget.
He said that due to financial pressure, the cost of the proposed provincial development projects has been reduced to Rs 125.9 billion.
However, he said that the schemes which were important from the point of view of public services and public service delivery, continued to be implemented and 2172 important schemes have been completed during the current fiscal year 2023-24.
