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The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) has claimed to have allocated over 1000 million rupees in grants to various national sports federations.
The PSB, which has faced criticism recently for inadequate funding and support, particularly towards the Pakistan Hockey Federation, has published its financial statements for the past five years on its website.
The reports reveal that the PSB provided the lowest amount of funding during the tenure of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a former cricket captain and sportsman.
In the fiscal year 2019/2020, when Khan was in office, the PSB distributed only 25 million rupees in grants for setting up training camps and supporting participation in international and national events.
In the following fiscal year 2020/21, this amount increased slightly to 42 million rupees.
In contrast, the PSB has significantly increased its funding in the last two fiscal years, including 2023/24, with a total expenditure of approximately 920 million rupees allocated to federations.
The Pakistan Amateur Athletics Federation, which earned praise for its performance at the Paris Olympics — thanks to javelin thrower Nadeem Arshad’s gold medal — received over 100 million rupees in grants over the last five years.
This amount includes over 70 million rupees granted this year, primarily for training and international event preparation for Arshad ahead of the Olympics.
The Pakistan Hockey Federation, which has frequently complained about insufficient funding despite being the national sport, received a total of 103 million rupees over the past five years. The largest grant of 56 million rupees was provided to the PHF last year.
Many national federations rely on PSB grants to sustain their operations, though some Olympic sports bodies also receive funds from the International Olympic Committee.
Former hockey Olympian, Samiullah said that after going through the PSB financial statement it becomes clear why Pakistan does not do well in non cricket sports.
“If you expect our hockey to grow and improve with a total of 100 rupees in five years which are not even properly audited or accounted for what can you expect, he said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Published: Sep 12 2024 | 9:44 AM IST
