Islamabad's attitude that 'big brother knows best' needs to change without any further loss of time. How can one contribute meaningfully if papers for a meeting are circulated among participants 10 minutes prior to its commencement? If there has to be a meaningful consultation then proposals/papers need to be circulated well in advance (at least a week before) for participants to come prepared and make a purposeful contribution. After all, the meeting was first scheduled for May 22nd and later postponed to May 26th. The papers must have been completed and emailed prior to the earlier scheduled date.
The Advisor on Finance (Sindh) Murad Ali Shah is quite right in objecting to the way business is conducted in finalising the Annual Development Plan at the meeting of the Annual Development Co-ordination Committee (APCC) held in Islamabad on Tuesday. Without getting into merits and demerits of the Plan, it needs to be clearly understood that the process followed thus far is woefully flawed and poor results are in evidence. One can witness the graveyards of incomplete or half-baked projects. Most of them were approved without sound economic reasons. Once the patron of the approved project is no more in power, the release of funds is delayed and this is why projects which should normally take four to five years to complete take one decade or even more!
Time for proper screening of projects is when the PC-1 application is submitted. There is a column in the application that needs to be filled as regards the cost/benefit ratio of the proposed project and experts of various fields in the Planning Commission are required to vet these PC-1 forms. Unfortunately, however, the Planning Commission has become a dump yard for the unwanted. And, this is precisely the reason why the Commission that was once considered as the eminent 'think tank' of the government has lost its position of eminence to the Finance Ministry which does not conduct itself as one of the several ministries; it considers itself as the entire government of Pakistan and everyone else its appendage.
The National Economic Council (NEC) needs to take cognisance of the weaknesses and address the issues raised by the provinces and their representatives to make the process more transparent and viable than it is at present. The annual plan has two portions: a) a commentary on the real sector, and b) approval of projects for which funds have to be earmarked by the NEC. The Finance Ministry's insistence, year-after-year, to reduce its fiscal deficit by cutting the funding earmarked for projects in the PSDP has stagnated the economy that at present needs a very strong push. One also needs to recognise that there is a lot of wastage in public projects as well as corruption. These need to be plugged. However, the public sector needs to step forward in areas where the private sector is reluctant to invest. Construction can provide unskilled as well as skilled jobs and help around 50 sectors where industries are operating much below their capacity. If the priorities are correct, even efficiency with austerity can be obtained. Let us now stop playing to the gallery and resorting to photo opportunities and press releases. This newspaper has been consistently clamouring for true federalism, as opposed to quasi-federalism which could be a potential cause of harm to efforts aimed at strengthening and promoting inter-provincial harmony in the country.
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