CSS, senior military officers visit Peshawar
Peshawar
Staff Report
A delegation of more than 233 officers including Pakistan Armed Forces Officers, Grade 20 CSS Officers and Senior Military Officers from friendly countries headed by Major General Inayat Hussian Chief Instructor of National Defense University visited Peshawar as part of their inland study tour to provincial capitals. To brief the delegation of NDU about KP government performance and other provincial matters a presentation was arranged at Chief Minister’s Secretariat Peshawar. KP Finance Minister Mr. Taimur Saleem Jhagra briefed the delegates.
In his opening remarks Finance minister said that no government since the 1970 general elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been a single party government, and no government has been reelected until 2018. People of KP gave a second chance to the single party government of Tehreek e Insaf on the basis of performance, where people experienced major improvement in province in six areas including Education,Health. Police Reforms, Billion Tree Tsunami project, service delivery and eliminating political interference and implementing merit policy, he added.
While highlighting the performance of the incumbent provincial government Taimur Jhagra said that 2018 government faced two challenges, beating the bar we set ourselves in previous tenure and swimming against the financial tide. Commenting on the provincial economy, the finance minister stated that 92 per cent of provincial receipts came from the federal government. “We are taking pragmatic steps to increase the provincial revenue generation by introducing reforms and developmental initiatives in the tourism, mines and mineral and energy sector,” he said.
The minister said we completely revamped our development budget, with record allocations to key sectors that will develop the Pakhtunkhwa economy, he elaborated how the government had focused on development by cutting government expenditures and diverting those funds to development. We looked inwards, transforming revenue performance, with a 49% increase in non-telecom revenue in the last year part of a five-year effort to make provincial revenue surpass Rs. 100 billion, he added.
He said that we were able to cut expenditures by Rs95 billion and allocated it for development. Also, Rs203 billion left from the budgets was reinvested back and as a result KP had the largest development budget in the province history, which was bigger than Sindh and equalled the development budget of Punjab.
