Rawalpindi: Rs 740 million deficit budget by Cantt. Board

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Aamir Yasin
RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) is to announce the Rs 740 million budget with 13 per cent deficit for the next fiscal by the end of June, it’s learnt.

According to sources, the RCB has planned no major project for the fiscal 2009-10 due to severe shortage of funds and will spend available money on reconstructing roads, lying waterlines, installing water filtration plants, building underground water tanks and improving drainage system in cantonment areas.

Also, the RCB will ask federal government for Rs 100 million additional funds to narrow the gap between income and expenditures.

The sources said the outgoing RCB chief executive officer (CEO), Shahid Bashir, had prepared the budget, which would be announced by his successor Adil Wasi Siddiqui around June 25. Wasi will assume the charge on June 16.

They said the provincial government’s denial of Rs 140 million share in Octroi proceeds to the RCB during the last year had landed the RCB in deep financial crisis and thus, hampering work on many development projects.

According to the sources, the provincial government released Rs 17 million to the board in July last year but has been withholding monthly share in Octroi earnings for the past 11 months despite repeated requests.

In May 1999, the Nawaz Sharif-led federal government had abolished Octroi before increasing Zila Tax (OZT) and General Sales Tax (GST) from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent with a commitment of disbursing 2.5 per cent revenue thus generated to the provinces and districts.

The sources said the RCB used to receive Rs 17 million every month but the provincial government had been releasing no funds for the last seven months and that too without intimation.

They said the board’s repeated requests to the provincial chief secretary’s office for release of funding had so far fallen on deaf ears.

The sources said the RCB had reported low tax collection.

According to them, the board was to collect Rs 446 million under the head of property tax, security deposits, special acts and miscellaneous sources during the current fiscal but its collections in this respect total around Rs 300 million.

The sources said financial constraints even made the RCB to curtail annual development programme allocations from Rs 215 million to Rs 140 million.

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