June 4, 2002	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22,1423

KARACHI, June 3: The Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) of Sindh is meeting here on Tuesday afternoon without any agenda and in total confusion.

Well placed sources say that the Sindh cabinet will meet on Tuesday morning while the PFC will hold its meeting in the afternoon with Sindh Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh in the chair.

The PFC members were earlier told that the meeting agenda will be given to them by Monday evening. In the evening they were told that agenda would be given on Tuesday morning.

There are confusing reports about the composition of the PFC. Nazar Sheikh, a retired civil servant was notified as one of the members of the PFC. He is reported to have preferred to join public service commission as a member. Neither any replacement has been made nor the PFC has been reconstituted. There were reports of PFC being reconstituted but no announcement was made.

Since its formation more than a year ago, the PFC held only three meetings. In the third meeting the PFC considered development ratings of 16 districts of Sindh. These ratings are reported to have been made on the basis of a UNICEF study. According to this study Karachi is 40 points ahead of the second less developed district.

Enquiries made in the relevant quarters revealed that a reputed private economic research institution has been given the job to prepare a working plan for fiscal devolution.

Sources said that economic profiles of 16 districts of Sindh have been prepared and may be placed before the PFC on Tuesday. What will, however, remain tricky is the issue of resource generation at the district, tehsil and town committee levels through levy of 67 odd local taxes that would bring virtually all segment of activities under taxation.

“PFC is meeting on Tuesday as a follow up exercise of last Friday meeting of the National Finance Commission (NFC) summoned by President General Pervez Musharraf at Islamabad,” is the explanation offered by a well placed source in Sindh government.

“Fiscal devolution was the theme of Friday NFC meeting,” the source said who pointed out that provinces have been asked to put in place a whole system of financial discipline for the districts and all other local governments at lower tiers in their respective provincial budgets.

Sindh government is expected to come out with its budget on June 18 and therefore Monday June 3 has probably proved to be a very long day in Sindh secretariat where inter-departmental meetings were held till late in the evening.