Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur has urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to review the federal government’s decision to cut 91 ongoing projects of the province from the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2024-25.

“The decision is undoubtedly contrary to previous decisions reached in the SIFC [Special Investment Facilitation Council] Apex Committee meeting on 3/1/2024,” he said in a June 5 letter to the premier.

He raised the matter related to decisions taken in the Annual Plan Coordination Committee meeting on May 31. The committee excluded 91 projects “with an estimated throw forward of Rs1,327,529.93 million” from the draft PSDP 2024-25.

While mentioning the above mentioned apex committee meeting, he said that it was decided that all ongoing projects would be completed to avoid waste of investment already made and legal/contractual issues. It was also decided that authorisation of allocated funds for such projects should be made to ensure their timely implementation.

Gandapur said that violation of both decisions would “jeopardize the development trajectory of KP”.

He reminded the federal government that the province did not pitch any new project for the PSDP 2024-25 while in violation of one of the decisions, a total of 279 projects worth Rs2,917 billion with an allocation of Rs63.9 billion were included in the PSDP.

He added that the allocation disparity between the provincial government’s approved budget and the federal government’s indicative budget ceiling for merged districts ADP and MA-AIP has exacerbated the situation.

Gandapur urged the PM to intervene to address the genuine demands of the KP government and review the proposed budgetary allocations and inclusion of omitted projects in the PSDP 2024-25.