our correspondent
Peshawar
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government is developing Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms strategy that would strengthen governance and policy-driven planning, fiscal management, resource mobilization, fiscal decentralization and reforms roadmap for the entire KP including the Newly Merged Districts.
In this connection, a day-long consultative session was arranged by the finance department in collaboration with the key line department and development partners on the 30th November 2020 in a local hotel in Peshawar. Senior official from Finance Department, Planning and Development (P&D), Local Government, KP Revenue Authority (KPRA), Excise and Taxation, KP Board of Revenue, Energy, irrigation, Mines, Health and Education Departments attended this session. The keynote speaker on the occasion was the Secretary Finance Mr. Atif Rehman.
The secretary finance stressed that Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa always had a considerable focus on PFM reforms, and it is increasingly showing its presence in the broader agenda of KP’s Government reforms strategy. In order to achieve these ends, Govt. of KP is designing a PFM Reforms strategy to roll out its Public Financial Management reforms to positively impact the government functionaries. Mr. Waqas Paracha, an advisor with the Sub-National Governance Program (SNG) also addressed the consultative session. He said that the technical aspects of PFM reforms are well understood and agreed upon by the government and development partners however, because of sub-optimal sequencing and flawed coordination with development partners these reforms were not able to have desired effects. This session is arranged to discuss the challenges the KP Government is facing to perform PFM Core Functions.
Mr. Raheal Siddiqui, the project team lead said that the SNG program was Launched in 2019. It supports the Governments of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and the local governments in selected districts to improve the way they are governed. It also supports in management of their resources for better service delivery. The programme aims to strengthen Pakistan’s public financial management and planning systems, assist the government in raising more revenue and allocating money to improve basic services especially for the underprivileged and marginalized groups of society like minorities, women from rural areas, transgender communities and people with disabilities amongst other groups in the process.
