Sindh CM holds meeting to discuss last budget of PPP tenure

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah presided over a meeting regarding preparation of the budget for financial year 2018-19 on Thursday evening.

The CM directed his team to control non-development expenditures, increase allocations in social sector such as education and health and water schemes be given special focus so that they could be completed well in time.

The chief minister was told that during 2016-17 the total provincial receipts, including SRB (GST on Services), Tax excluding GST and non tax were Rs166.033 bn.

In 2016-17 the provincial receipts rose Rs159.294 billion in the same heads and during 2017-18 the estimated amount is Rs199.627 and receipts of first seven months is around Rs100 billion.

The meeting was informed that during the current financial year, 2974 schemes, including 2158 on-going and 816 new are in progress against an amount of Rs 244 billion , including Rs 39.884 million revenue. The CM was told that the provincial government has released 60 percent of the allocated amount which comes to Rs 146.388 billion which is itself a record while the 50 percent of the released amount or Rs 72.485 billion has been utilization.

The chief minister said that the health department was showing some progress, particularly in the hospitals, which have been out-sourced, therefore this policy must be strengthened and more health units may be out-sourced in the next financial year.