ISLAMABAD: The National Highway Council (NHC) on Thursday gave approval for budget estimates for 2017-18 and the five-year development plan 2018-23.
Federal Minister for Communications Hafiz Abdul Karim presided over the meeting of NHC at the Ministry of Communications. Minister of State for Communications Muhammad Junaid Chaudhry, secretary communications, National Highway Authority chairman and other members of the council participated in the meeting. The meeting was informed that under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) around Rs320 billion were allocated for the year 2017-18. The total number of projects were 85, which were currently under various phases of execution and included 72 on-going and 13 news projects. In addition, Rs2.46 billion were allocated as maintenance grant for the annual maintenance of national highways including Rs0.25 billion for KKH Thakot-Kunjerab road and Rs0.075 billion for KKH Skardu road.
NHA Chairman Shahid Ashraf Tarar informed the meeting that the organisation had been able to steadily increase its revenue share to around Rs25 billion over the last three years, due to the introduction of financial and administrative reforms. He said the PSDP allocation of NHA had increased tremendously over the last few years which can be assessed easily from the fact that it stood at Rs63 billion in 2013-14 but rose to Rs320 billion in 2017-18. He said this reflected the increasing confidence of the federal government in NHA’s ability regarding the most appropriate utilisation of the allocated funds.
