Islamabad: Punjab has spent just a fraction 16pc of its total development fund of Rs550bn during the first five months of the present financial year, from July through November.
Experts blame the line departments’ lack of capacity to plan, design and implement projects, bureaucratic lethargy, and political interference for the slow pace of utilisation of funds meant to extend and improve the quality of service delivery to the people.
“Historically, the pace of fund utilisation picks up momentum in the third quarter of the financial year, which often results in widespread misuse and waste of taxpayers’ money as authorities try to use more funds in less time,” an economist said last week.
A retired public servant insisted that almost a third of the total ‘utilised’ money is either stolen or is wasted because of the delays in planning and execution of schemes as the government hastily tries to meet its development spending targets towards the end of the year.
