KARACHI: The Sindh government’s revenues have decreased by Rs 70 billion during the last nine months as the federal government has not yet released Rs 60 billion to the province out of its total share of Rs 370 billion over the period.
This was revealed by Sindh Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, while speaking on the third fiscal quarter (January-March) report at the provincial assembly. He maintained that Sindh received Rs 310 billion in the corresponding period against its Rs 370 billion share.
The minister said that low provincial collection of Rs 83.8 billion during the three quarters against Rs 93 billion target is also a reason behind low revenue generation.
For the current fiscal year, he said that the government had estimated Rs 726 billion revenue growth of which the federal government had to provide Rs 494 billion. Total provincial revenues collection was estimated at Rs 124.6 billion mainly Rs 61 billion from sales tax on services and Rs 63.6 billion from other taxes, he added.
The revenue expenditure for Sindh was estimated at Rs 503.3 billion of which Rs 395.3 billion were released and Rs 285.2 billion spent. For ADP, the government had earmarked Rs 162 billion in the current fiscal budget of which Rs 142 was for the province and Rs 20 billion for districts. Till now, he said, Rs 88.4 of the provincial ADP had been released and Rs 61.4 billion spent. A budget of Rs 12.8 billion of ADP has been released to the districts, he said.
