May 23, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 10,1423

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PESHAWAR, May 22: Difference of opinion prevails among the provincial governments over the vital issue of determining the current expenditures’ benchmarks for the five-year term of the new National Finance Commission award, sources said.

Sindh and Punjab have taken the position that the provincial governments’ actual figures of current expenditures arrived at during the last five financial years should be taken as the base-line for fixing the benchmarks.

“There appears to be a wide gap in terms of thinking among the provincial governments over this key issue,” said a source in the provincial cabinet.

Whereas Sindh and Punjab have taken this stand after recording substantial increase in their current expenditures during the five-year term of the current NFC award, the NWFP has opposed the idea, fearing its financial repercussions, the sources said.

“The NWFP is likely to suffer financially if the new NFC award takes the last five years’ expenditure as the base-line,” said the sources.

The Frontier province, said the sources, apprehended that it would negatively affect it as its current expenditure did not register a growth during the last four financial years due to the numerous economy measures applied by the two governments that took helm during the current NFC operations.

These sources said that while Sindh and Punjab recorded over 45 per cent and more than five per cent increase, respectively, in their current expenditure during last four financial years, continued resource constraints forced the NWFP to keep its current expenditure at a bare minimum level.

As per the current NFC projections for its five years of operations starting from the 1997-98, the NWFP was allowed to spend Rs30.106bn on current expenditure in the 1997-98 financial year, Rs35.115bn in the 1998-99 financial year, Rs40.881bn in the 1999-2000 financial year, Rs47.869bn in the 2000-01 financial year and Rs55.925bn in the 2001-02 financial year.

However, against that, according to the recently finalized accounts of the NWFP government for the 2000-01 financial year, the province spent a total of Rs30.005bn under various heads of current expenditure.

“It clearly reflects that the NWFP’s current expenditure in the 2000-01 financial year was even less than the maximum level of expenditure it had projected for the 1997-98 financial year in line with the current NFC’s recommendations,” said the sources.

The actualized current expenditure amount of Rs30.005bn for the 2000-01 financial year shows that the NWFP’s expenditure stands at the level the province was supposed to adhere to in the 1997-98 financial year as per the current NFC projections.

Not only that the current expenditure for the 2000-01 financial year ended up at a level less than the revised estimates, the provincial government, according to the sources, managed to curtail its current expenditure bringing it down to a further low when compared with the final expenditure figures of the 1999-2000 financial year.

According to official sources, the province’s current expenditure had settled at Rs31.601bn in the 1999-2000 financial year.

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