ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has said the size of the federal development budget under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) has been set at Rs 800 billion for the upcoming fiscal year 2022-23.
He said the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth target for the upcoming fiscal year has been fixed at 5% while in the previous year it was 4.8%.
Briefing media here after chairing the meeting of the Annual Plan Coordination Committee (APCC), Ahsan Iqbal said the growth numbers in the current fiscal year were nothing to do with the targets because the target was set as per the old base year, however, the re-basing jacked up the growth to 6%.
Ahsan Iqbal said out of the total outlay, Rs 100 billion would be utilized through the Private Public Partnership (PPP).
He said the meeting reviewed the recommendation for the development budget 2022-23 presented by various concerned stakeholders of the federal as well as provincial governments.
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“Under the feedback of those recommendations, we will present the proposals for the federal PSDP 2022-23 with a total outlay of Rs 800 billion to the National Economic Council (NEC) on June 07, 2022”, he added.
This year, preparing the PSDP was a very challenging task because, for the first time in 75 years, no releases were made in the last quarter of the fiscal year 2021-22 due to the non-availability of funds in the national kitty.
Due to this, he said the government’s portfolio was badly affected and for the next fiscal year, the minister could manage Rs 700 billion.
He said when the PML-N left the government in 2017-18, the federal PSDP size was Rs 1000 billion, however, despite a lapse of five years, the budget cut halved to only Rs 500 billion in the year 2021-22.
“We were expecting that keeping in view the country’s increasing requirements, the PSDP would have increased up to Rs 2 trillion”, he added.
He said the next year’s development budget strategy had been kept prudent to make the budget as per the country’s needs.
