PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government officials on Tuesday claimed it was the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government in the province, which had invested funds in stocl< market.

PML-N MNA Daniyal Aziz had alleged lately that the current Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had invested Rs378.71 million proceeds of Hydel Development Fund in stock market and later fudged Egures for several hydel projects to cover up losses on that investment.

In a brieñng to provincial information minister Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani that was also attended by a select group of journalists, officials of finance and energy and power departments said the current PTI gov-ernment was not responsible for the stock market investment as it dated back to the MMA government and that it was the PTI government, which began the disinvestment process.

Finance department official Najamuz Zaman told participants that his department was operating three kinds of funds, including General Provident Investment (GPI), pension and HDF.

He said GPI and HDF dated back to 1992, while pension fund was established in 1998.

The official said the government had provided legal covers to the funds in question over the years and currently, it had Rs40 billion in GPI fund and Rs26 billion each in HDF and pension funds.

He said all three funds were managed by respective boards, as GPI and pension funds boards were headed by the chief secretary, while HDF board was led by the chief minister himself.

Zaman said the MMA government started investing in stock market from the GPI and pension funds with an amount of Rs20 million, which capped at Rs563 million in 2008, and it was made in bluechips shares.

He explained that though the investment real value dropped to Rs200 million during 2009 global financial meltdown, the government kept its shares close to bosom till investment regained its real value.

The official claimed that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had earned a total capital gain of Rs68 million and Rs121 million dividends on the investment so far.

He said under the current government, the disinvestment process was started and Rs383 million had been withdrawn from stock market so far with the remaining amount totaling Rs175 million.

About HDF, Zaman said the fund was launched with Rs100 million in 1992 to develop hydel electricity in province and currently estimated at Rs26 billion.

Of the amount, around Rs17 billion is invested in the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) and Bank of Khyber (BoK).

`Of this amount, Rs200 million is invested in NBP and the remaining amount in BoK,` he said, adding that Rs9 billion has been invested in State Bank`s treasury bills.He said the provincial government had earned profit of Rs13.8 billion on the amount since 1992.

Zainullah Shah, the chief planning ofhcer at the energy and power department, told the minister that the government had released Rs14 billion from HDF until August 31 for at least seven projects.

He said the energy and power department required Rs64 billion for five projects of 216 megawatts but as HDF volume amounted to Rs26 billion, the government required further funding of Rs38 billion to complete projects.

Shah said currently, the department was trying to acquire investment to meet fund shortage and that a consortium of financers, including GT and UBL, would help generate Rs60 billion.

He said the department was also working on a micro-hydel project to produce 35 megawatts from 356 micro hydels across the province.

`Fifteen micro-hydel project will be completed by mid-September before being handed over to the community,` he said.