Govts dole out uplift funds to MNAs as development spending falters

As development spending continued to falter in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, successive governments kept doling out funds for the discretionary schemes of parliamentarians, according to official data. In the past eight months, parliamentarians consumed Rs38 billion out of the allocated Rs90bn in the budget for their schemes, as per the latest data on development expenditure released by the Planning Commission. The development activities under all the other 34 federal ministries during the 8MFY (July-February) kept struggling with a combined expenditure of just Rs107bn. The total expenditure under the entire Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) stood at Rs237bn in eight months, over Rs13bn less than Rs250.3bn in the same period last year. This also included spending on corporations, special areas like Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and merged districts of the formerly Federally Administered Tribal Areas.