PESHAWAR
A meeting regarding budget for financial year 2023-24 was held here with Caretaker Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Muhammad Azam Khan in the chair on Monday.
Matters relating to financial strategy and preparation of budget for the first quarter of the financial year 2023-24 also come under discussion during the meeting.
Besides, caretaker Provincial Minister for Planning & Development, Hamid Shah and Advisor to the Chief Minister on Finance, Himayatullah Khan, Chief Secretary Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, Additional Chief Secretary, Zubair Asghar Qureshi, Principal Secretary to the chief minister Amjad Ali Khan and senior officials of the finance and planning department also attended the meeting.
The meeting was briefed in detail on the budget estimates for the first quarter of the new financial year, preliminary out-lines and annual development programme and various other aspects of the budget.
Financial problems faced by the provincial government, difficulties in budgeting and proposed measures to overcome these difficulties were discussed in detail during the meeting.
It was decided to give a briefing to the Prime Minister of Pakistan in the next few days about the financial difficulties faced by the province and to request special support from the Prime Minister in this regard.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister directed the concerned authorities to avoid unnecessary expenses as much as possible in the preparation of the new budget. Allocation of funds for development projects should be judicious and the figures of the new budget should be realistic.
Meanwhile, a meeting of the Policy Board of Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (PEDO) was also held under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister, in which water usage charges for private sector hydropower projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were increased from Rs 0.425 per kilowatt hour to Rs 1.10 per kilowatt hour.
It was approved to send the case to the federal government. With the approval of this increase, the annual income received by the provincial government will increase from 1.3 billion rupees to 3.4 billion rupees annually.
In the meeting, it was decided to form a committee to prepare rules for the appointment of the members of the PEDO Executive Committee to prepare rules and submit them to the provincial cabinet for final approval.
