Exemplary financial discipline - dawn.com

“The development of Balochistan, a victim of decades of neglect, is a daunting job,” says an official of the finance department.

The vastness of area — the province is 44 per cent of Pakistan, scattered population, tribal society and insurgency make the job of the coalition government quite difficult, he says.

He, however, underscores the lack of sufficient financial resources to meet the development needs of people and build infrastructure for industry and agriculture as the biggest challenge of all for policy-makers.

The province has raised its development budget to Rs35.8 billion for the next financial year from Rs12.78 billion in 2008 thanks to its increased share under the National Finance Commission (NFC) award. Still its appetite for more funds for building economic and social infrastructure is rising due to growing cost of development and supply gap.

Politicians and officials agree that the task of developing the province will become even harder in the years to come unless Balochistan’s share from the federal taxes is substantially increased, which is a near impossibility at the moment.

So how to create fiscal space for development? “The development of its mineral resources and its long coastline for generating financial resources is the only hope for the people of the province,” an official says. He claims that the provincial government is already moving in that direction, though very slowly because of legal issues involved.

The plan to set up the Reko Diq Copper Refinery Plant, for example, is one such project.

“The government has been setting aside money for this project for last couple of years but is unable to move ahead because of litigation in Pakistani and foreign courts,” he defends the government.

In the meanwhile, the Balochistan government intends to make the provincial investment board functional next year in order to take decisions with regards to more than Rs15 billion it had allocated in the last two years for the purpose of making investments to raise provincial revenues. This amount does not include Rs8.5 billion set aside for the implementation of the Reko Diq refinery plant project.