ISLAMABAD: In a major development, the government plans to cut down non-development expenditures up to 25 per cent by abolishing various ministries, attached departments, reducing the working staff and introducing paperless government during the current fiscal year, a senior official of the Gilani government told The News.

"It is our aim to reduce the non development expenditures up to Rs 100 billion during the current fiscal through various measures wherever it is possible," a senior official of the government, who is a member of the task force constituted by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani for recommending measures to cut down non development expenditures, said in an exclusive talk.

He said that the government would move towards settling the issue of the concurrent list and all those ministries currently under the purview of the federal government would be handed over to the provinces after bringing the desired changes in the law of the land.

It is not yet clear whether the government would slash down the defence allocation in its bid to reduce the non development expenditures. The government will not be able to reduce debt servicing and payment of salaries, pension, etc.

However, while explaining measures on the cards for reducing expenditures, he said that the prime minister had already imposed a ban on purchasing new cars, furniture, appliances and other luxurious items for official use and other strict measures would be announced after filling vacant ministerial slots following Zardariís victory in the presidential election.

He said that a proposal came under discussion for disposing off luxurious cars but it was dropped at a later stage because certain mafia would come forward to get expensive cars at cheap rates. "We will recommend to the government to ensure proper maintenance of official cars as well as trying to avoid their misuse by curtailing use of fuel," he added.

The official said the task force had already formulated recommendations in order to reduce its current expenditures during the current financial year. "We also recommended to completely review the procurement system of the government in order to achieve greater transparency," he added.

He said the government had inserted budgetary provision for allocating money to install equipment related to holding video conferencing in the federal capital by connecting with four provincial metropolitan cities in order to avoid tours of officials in the name of holding frequent meetings.

On the name of rationalising the development budget under the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP), the official said that the government had decided to take ministries/divisions into confidence by allowing them to prioritise their projects, keeping in view the financial constraints being faced by the country. "We have asked the ministries/divisions to get their input on it but it was delayed because of vacant slots as the PML-N related ministries were not filled by the government in accordance with its announced policy," he maintained. Without changing the budgetary provisions, he said, the government would rationalise the PSDP in the current fiscal year. He said the ministries/divisions had been asked to identify those projects that would be handed over to the Infrastructure Project Development Facility (IPDF) for luring investment of the private sector.

He said the government would take concrete steps to move towards e-government in the days to come, which would help reduce unnecessary expenditures. "We have not lifted the ban on recruitment in order to reduce expenditures," he added.

However, when a senior official at the Finance Ministry was contacted for seeking his input on proposed measures to cut down the non-development expenditures, he conceded that the government had worked out recommendations to slash down the expenditures in the current fiscal in order to achieve the envisaged fiscal deficit target of 4.7 per cent of the GDP.