PCB announces Rs 700 million deficit budget for 2012-13

Karachi, June 21 (ANI): The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has approved a deficit budget of Rs 700 million for the fiscal year 2012-13 in its recent Governing Board (GB) meeting chaired by PCB chief Zaka Ashraf.

"The amount is a tremendous improvement," The Express Tribune quoted a GB member, as saying.

The amount is an improvement on the Rs 1.1 billion deficit budget that was announced last year.

"There are several stadiums that need renovation. There are academies and high-performance centres that need modification so we believed that infrastructure development should get the major share of the budget and the chairman agreed to that," the member said.

The PCB would build two high-performance centres in Karachi and Multan along the same lines as Lahore's National Cricket Academy. It also intends to build a new stadium in Islamabad and Larkana.

Meanwhile, four regions have been added to Pakistan cricket, nominated by Patron-in-Chief Asif Ali Zardari, which did not please the GB members.

"Dera Murad Bugti, Larkana, FATA and Bahawalpur are now active regions. Bahawalpur is a good inclusion and FATA has tremendous talent but the other two regions have been included on political grounds. The teams of Quetta and Hyderabad don't even have 11 good players," the member said. (ANI)