PTI govt okayed Rs1.1bn for two VVIP aircraft, reveal budget documents

ISLAMABAD: When the commoners were being lectured to brave inflation and subsidy was being slashed, Imran Khan’s government quietly allocated Rs1.1 billion for the purchase of two VVIP planes and their maintenance.

This secret has now been unfolded, thanks to the budget documents tabled in the National Assembly. Although, the budget documents don’t mention dignitaries using these luxury planes, officials who are privy to details say the VVIP jets are used by the prime minister and the president of Pakistan. The supplementary grant for this purpose was approved by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) and has now been reflected in the budget documents for its formal approval from the parliament.

For the purchase of two VVIP Gulfstream aircraft, the PTI government granted approval of Rs800 million to the Ministry of Defence Production. Another sum of Rs300 million was earmarked for the maintenance of two VVIP aircraft, which appear to be the same purchased in the outgoing financial year. The Ministry of Defence is responsible for their upkeep. This allocation is reflected in the supplementary grants. These are the payments made in addition to the already-allocated budget for different ministries. Such allocations are generally meant for projects of urgent nature. It remains to be explored what necessitated the urgency of this purchase.

The maintenance cost, it appears, has gone down due to the induction of new aircraft. This was Rs415 million in the financial year of 2018-2019 as compared to Rs300 million allocated in 2021-22’s supplementary grants.

An informed official, however, considered the purchase of new VVIP aircraft justified. According to him, the existing aircraft were purchased in 2005.

Another significant amount of Rs2 billion reflected in the supplementary grants was the compensation paid to the families of Chinese killed and injured in a terrorist attack occurred in July last year. As many as 10 Chinese had lost their livesand 26 were injured when a suicide bomber hit a bus that was transporting them to the site of the World Bank-funded Dasu Hydropower project. Initially, the government had tried to downplay the attack as an accident caused by gas leakage, but the truth dawned on the public when China cancelled a scheduled meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee of CPEC and the Chinese contractor on the Dasu project stopped working.

The government then worked out four different compensation amounts ranging between Rs810 million and Rs3.6 billion, according to a report of journalist Shehbaz Rana, as the Chinese contractor demanded compensation of $37 million, a claim which was 500pc more than what a family of such a victim would receive if he is killed in a similar attack in their own country.

It was the second time that Pakistan offered compensation to the Chinese victims of terrorism. Earlier, in 2004, one Chinese lost life and another was injured in a terrorist attack while working on the Gomal Zam Dam project. Pakistan then paid $100,000 to the family of the deceased and $50,000 to the injured worker.