INP
PESHAWAR
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Department in collaboration with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) funded Sub-National Governance Programme organized an orientation for MPAs of KP Assembly to enhance their understanding of public finance management, budget analysis and key challenges of budget 2020-21.
The Orientation session was chaired by Speaker Provincial Assembly Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani and Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra.
Public financial management (PFM) is critical to economic governance and essential in establishing the performance, legitimacy and accountability of functional states. PFM leverages effective administration of funds collected and spent by governments. Moreover, the budget is an important document in ensuring transparency, accountability, comprehensiveness and good governance.
“The Year 2019-20 was progressing as a year of economic growth for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, however, the province observed a significant dip in progress due to COVID. Despite all challenges we successfully and launched universal health coverage for the entire population of KP” said Taimur Saleem Jhagra Minister Finance KP in his presentation.
He added, “This year’s budget was one of the most challenging in recent times due to COVID-19 pandemic but government adopted a bold agenda of reforms, conducting budget rationalization exercise, adopted strict austerity measures and presented a balanced budget”.
In his detailed presentation on PFM, Waqas Paracha SNG-II PFM Advisor noted that Public financial management was not only crucial in meeting fiscal aims, monitoring progress against targets and effective utilization of resources, but a sound system could aid the government in setting future priorities and ensuring fiscal sustainability.
Speaking in his keynote remarks, Mushtaq Ghani, Speak Provincial Assembly KP said that such sessions increase the legislator’s public finance knowledge on the core processes of budget preparation and enable legislators to understand and analyze the budget to promote accountability and transparency. Therefore, sensitization of the legislators on key challenges to the budget 20-21 is very important. He appreciated the joint efforts of the FD and SNG in organizing this session.
“By providing a detailed description of proposed expenditure, it allows Provincial Assembly and the general public to “know where does the money come from and go” and thus increases transparency,” said the SNG-II Provincial Team Lead Muhammad Salim Khan in his closing remarks. He said the budget is based on key assumptions about income and expenditure next year. There is huge work on the back to establish these assumptions. The MPs must understand such assumptions for ensuring the element of accountability.
SNG is a four-year FCDO-funded programme supporting the Governments of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, as well as local governments in selected districts, to improve the way they are governed and manage their resources for better service delivery.
