Sources told Business Recorder that the provincial government was striving to improve budget execution and reconciliation with greater emphasis on monitoring fiscal progress by increasing revenue collection and improving utilisation of funds apart from strengthening internal controls through ensuring reconciliation of accounts.
The sources claimed that the government was trying to gradually shift from input based, bottom up, incremental form of budgeting to policy based, output oriented medium term budgeting. Output based budgeting (OBB) had already been introduced in seven departments before the development of the Public Financial Management (PFM) Reform Strategy. Under this strategy, Output based budgeting is being extended to School Education Department and two important public sector companies viz Saaf Paani Company and Lahore Waste Management Company in Punjab.
The sources revealed that the Punjab government was committed to a more open and transparent budgetary process through various initiatives including publishing of the annual Citizens' Budget and 'Punjab Budget Transparency Review' report. "The main purpose of the Citizens' Budget is to present the budgetary information clearly and concisely using non-technical language for increased comprehension by general public. This initiative has promoted accountability of the government and has led to improved Open Budget Index (OBI)/Budget Transparency Report (BTR) score of the government," the sources added.
About Local Government structure of Punjab, the sources said, an Interim PFC Award was going to be announced to provide adequate resources to newly elected local governments under PLGA 2013. The interim award is directed towards translating existing allocations into a local government grants framework with some additionalities. Talking about revenue generation, the sources said during the first five months of current fiscal year, 11-percent raise in income had been registered when compared to the previous year.