Punjab which announced its budget for 2020-21 will have Rs337 billion for its Annual Development Programme (ADP). The figure shows a 9.42 percent increase against last year’s Rs308bn.
Provincial budget documents showed that 29pc of the ADP will go to the social sector, followed by 23pc to infrastructure development, 14pc to special initiatives, 13pc for services sector, 5pc for production sector and 15pc for others.
Of the total ADP, 35pc has been earmarked for 11 districts of south Punjab “to uplift the living standard of people of the area as well as to improve the socio-economic indicators”. These funds have been ring-fenced and will not be diverted unlike in the past.
Overall, a sum of Rs47bn has been earmarked for the Covid-19 — Punjab Economic Stimulus Programme — to invest in tackling the health crisis and catalyze economic growth.
In this regard, Rs30bn have been allocated for small works programs that will provide sustainable livelihood opportunities, Rs8bn to support the Micro Small Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector and skill training programs and Rs9bn for Communicable Disease Programme to help combat the pandemic.
Following the disruptions in the education sector due to the pandemic, Rs80 million have also been earmarked for Taleem Ghar Initiative to help identify missed School Learning Outcomes, content generation for distant learning and strengthening digital infrastructure.
Moreover, in view of the threat to food and agriculture sectors from the locust invasion, an initiative titled the Locust Control Operation and Allied Matters in Cholistan Initiative will combat the major threat to food security.
An amount of Rs12bn has been allocated to the Health Insurance Programme to improve access of poor populations to good quality medical services, through a micro health insurance scheme.
However, the government has reduced allocations for the agriculture sector to Rs8.065bn from Rs15.5bn in the last year’s ADP. The ADP announced a new initiative of the Rural Enterprises in Agriculture Development to promote agribusiness projects through private investment for generating income and rural employment.
At least Rs11.86bn have been allocated for 1,348 schemes of water supply and sanitation, while Rs2.5bn have been given separately to the Punjab Abe-Pak Authority for the provision of clean drinking water in various districts, especially in south Punjab.
The government claims that the ADP 2020-21 has been designed to counter the education and health crisis and other challenges faced by the economy of the province. Livelihood security through social protection schemes; investments to fill health infra

Indus Motor Company (IMC), manufacturers of Toyota vehicles in Pakistan, has made Rs20 million contribution to “The Prime Minister’s COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Fund 2020”.
Ali Asghar Jamali, CEO Indus Motor handed over the cheque to the Prime Minister during his recent meeting. He also presented a cheque for Rs10 million for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre.
He appreciated the Government’s tireless efforts to overcome the public-health challenge and to safeguard the nation’s community and economy. With regards to his company’s contribution amidst COVID-19 pandemic, Ali Asghar Jamali said, “With the rising number of confirmed cases and fatalities, our country requires support from every quarter to strengthen Government’s efforts to fight the pandemic. IMC has made significant efforts in providing ration hampers to more than 10,000 needy and underprivileged families during the government lockdown. Extending support to front-line medical workers, IMC also donated medical equipment and PPEs to hospitals. We hope that our contribution will help the government to strengthen the health infrastructure to mitigate and contain this deadly infection as soon as humanly possible.” He further emphasized, At this time of crisis, the corporate community and the civil society need to be united and contribute additional resources to help eliminate hunger, disease, and poverty, while paving the way for an early economic recovery

Two new Lathe Machines have been added in the Mechanical Department laboratory of Government Polytechnic Institute (GPI), Mithi.
Some two years ago Thar Engro PowerGen Ltd/Thar Foundation entered into a partnership with STEVTA to improve the learning environment of the Institute by improving infrastructure, upgrading laboratories, the of faculty, and providing scholarships to local students.
A committee called as Institutional Management Committee was constituted to steer the improvement process of the Institution. Now, every year 75 Thari students are being given a full scholarship to complete Diploma Course, infrastructure is being improved, laboratory equipment is being added, new faculty have been recruited and on-site practical learning at Thar coal site has also been introduced.
All these steps have brought significant improvement in the Institution. These two Lathe machines are also part of improving laboratories and workshops for better learning for local students.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MoS&T) has designed a joint defense-civil research and development (R&D) platform, said Fawad Chaudhry, the Federal Minister for S&T last week.
Prime Minister Imran Khan, he revealed had also given his nod and they would soon launch short-term and long term projects.
In developed countries like the US, Israel, and China, huge money goes to defense for research and development but later it comes back to civilians sectors as there is a connection between them there.
Ironically, he observes, “We do not have any linkage between defense and civilian sectors in Pakistan. Now we have formed an R&D mechanism which will be formally approved by the prime minister soon”.
Fawad Chaudhry said they would soon announce projects under the new arrangement.
Initially, Agriculture, Chemicals, and Electronics are the areas of focus.
Looking back at the performance of MoS&T in Pakistan he says we have never created a connection between industry and researchers. For instance, he claims we have extraordinary research work in all three agriculture universities in Pakistan but they are not linked with the farmers.
“I asked the prime minister to allow universities to launch commercial projects and he agreed to it but the issue is the implementation which we are facing for the last 9 months.
The minister is of the view that Pakistan did two major mistakes in the 1980s. We {Pakistan} made seminaries on foreign directives but did not seek to open campuses of institutions like Cambridge, Yale or Oxford like India did after normalization of relations with the west telling them to make MIT.
Chaudhry says we usually do not have money for science and technology and whatever we have we waste it a lot.