BALOCHISTAN BUDGET—AN ATTEMPT TO STREAMLINE ECONOMY

The Provincial Government has presented it last budget of its five-year tenure pending general elections sometime next year. The budget is generally welcomed as a good budget for the province with some reservation about the leakages of funds and misuse of official powers by some sections of the ruling coalition. Again it is record development budget with the commitment from the Minister in-charge to monopolize the development spending and not to disclose to the media about the details or reviews of the past development spending. It is good news that the Provincial Government had proposed massive spending on solar power meeting the growing energy needs of Balochistan. Some Rs 888 millions had been allocated for solar homes and Rs 3.5 billion allocated for this sector. The Chief Minister Secretariat and the Governor’s House will be switched over to solar system ensuring round the clock power supply to import centres of power in Balochistan. It is far better to provide solar system to the entire provincial secretariat, the real centre of administrative power in this province. Special funds should allocate for providing solar system for the Civil Secretary ensuring round-the-clock power supply to the Secretariat. We had earlier suggested in these columns that the entire village electrification programme of the Government should be converted and solar system be used as it is more feasible for this vast province of Pakistan. The Grind system is a failure and every village should have small power house based on solar energy instead of taking costly and lengthy transmission line to all corners of Balochistan. For this simple reason, the village electrification system has failed and now a day there is no electricity thus Government is resorting to massive load shedding of 22 hours a day in major parts of Balochistan. The second import decision is to allocate fund for making Reko Dik Project operational at the earliest since there is no chance that the consortium of two international firms are unable to make it function following a dispute with the provincial Government. Reko Dik is the most prestigious project and it remain corruption and scandal free in the interest of poor people of Balochistan. All corrupt, vested interests and dishonest people should be kept far away from the project so that it is implemented at the earliest. Reko Dik will guarantee a sizeable income to Balochistan taking it out from the perennial financial and economic crisis, once its start production. The project had been delayed for more than two decades as vested interests were involved and corrupt and dishonest people in the Government did not implement it on priority basis. Now time has come that the Government should not delay it further. Help from brotherly Iran can be sought in establishing a refinery for separation of copper from gold disallowing the import of blister copper to outside world. Finally, the subsidy on agriculture tube wells is totally misplaced keeping in view the depleting water table in areas from owners are given subsidy for indiscriminate withdrawal of sub soil water. There is no justification for subsidy to a small area of Balochistan and denying to the rest of Balochistan. It is discriminatory and uncalled for. In total, the Government is providing a subsidy of Rs seven billion while the entire product of fruits, including apple value less than Rs One billion, to say the least. The Government should stop this subsidy as it was stopped to wheat subsidy for the last couple of year. Let the growers make their own economics viable with subsidy and plan their agriculture land on this basis. No public money should be provided for a man made disaster for drying up the subsoil water making whole of Balochistan a huge desert sooner or later. We hope that the Government will end the shortsighted policy of subsidy to agriculture tube wells merely because the owners had a political clout in the present Government.