KARACHI
World Bank has shown concerns regarding implementation of $50 million Sindh Public Sector Management Reform Project, besides downgrading overall progress of Project Development Objective (PDO) and implementation improvement.
The report issued on Monday, available with Pakistan Today, shows that only one out of seven Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs), on transparency of budget formulation and execution was achieved in two years, and two of three PDO indicators (increase in revenues from the Sales Tax on Services and improvement in budget credibility) are in search of their track for the last three years.
‘No progress has been made towards the PDO indicator on reducing the average time-frame for the completion of procurement processes’ the documents indicates.
The Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) took two years to revise its staffing plan, develop a training program for incoming staff, and is now close to completing the recruitment of 40 new professional-grade staff, as envisaged in the staffing plan. The target of 2 to 3 years for the relevant DLI on enhancing SRB human resources capacity for administration couldn’t be realised, which required further time.
‘The SRB has also completed the implementation of its automation plan, including by establishing linkages with third-party databases, however, TPV report needs to confirm the achievement of the relevant DLI on the increased automation of SRB systems’ the documents show, adding that the SRB has also launched 135 tax audits, which are currently underway. Once these audits are completed, the target for year 2 of the DLI on the implementation of risk-based audits will be met.
The Finance Department has been finding its track to achieve the annual target for the DLI related to budget transparency for the third year in a row. The quarterly budget execution reports are now produced directly by the Financial Management Information System (FMIS) and published promptly within two years of a quarter’s end. Progress towards establishing the internal audit function has, however, been slow.
There has been no progress towards the development of e-procurement systems towards strengthening the overall public procurement performance.
The Planning and Development Department (P&DD) has tested the Annual Development Plan (ADP) monitoring system, entered the data for 55 percent of the targeted ADP projects (project cost above PKR 500 million), supplied field staff who will conduct the monitoring with smartphones that carry the ADP monitoring application, and conducted training for these field staff. The first report is due to be produced at the end of the current fiscal year, thereby meeting the year 1 target of the relevant DLI on pilot monitoring of the implementation of development schemes, but with a 2 year delay.
