LAHORE, June 25: Punjab will announce the final Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) award distributing its resources between the 34 districts and the provincial government for the next three years before Sept 30.

“The final award may or may not revise up or down the district and provincial shares as announced in the interim PFC award,” Punjab finance secretary, Salman Siddique, said here on Tuesday.

Answering questions at the post-budget conference, Salman said the interim PFC award had fixed the share of the districts on the basis of their fiscal needs. He said the final award had not been given because of paucity of time and a hurriedly “finalized award could have created certain complications”.

He said the commission had decided to give an interim award as its members felt that a final award could not be announced on the basis of the six-month performance of the district governments.

The secretary said though the province and the districts were not adversaries, both of them had a claim on the resources of the province. He said the districts were yet to be devolved the power to collect taxes and their fiscal capacity needed to be enhanced. Hence it was prudent to give an interim award for the time being, he added. “We want that neither people nor province nor the local governments (should) suffer (because of a hurry).”

The provincial government in the budget for the fiscal 2002-03 allocated the districts an estimated Rs58.538 billion — or 38.72 per cent from the total resource proceeds of Rs133.205 billion of the Provincial Consolidated Fund (PCF). The districts share is up by Rs9.361 billion from the outgoing year’s allocation of Rs49.22 billion.

The provincial allocation (minus foreign assistance) stands at Rs47.125 billion or 35.38 per cent of the PCF. The allocations made for charged expenditure, pensions and others are estimated at Rs27.542 billion or 20.68 per cent of the consolidated fund.

Salman said the charged expenditure, including debt servicing, subsidies and pensions, was kept out of the “provincial divisible pool” for it was difficult to determine the share of “individual” districts.

He said the PFC would meet again on Thursday to “determine the share of each district from the allocation made in the budget for them”. He said it was for the PFC to “determine the weightage of the two significant factors of population and under-development while deciding the share of individual districts”.

Finance Minister Tariq Hamid said the upward revision of taxes would bring an additional Rs290 million. The details of the revised tax slabs would be given in a few days.

He said the philosophy working behind the provincial budget was to make it “people-friendly and transparent”.

Salman said the government had decided to “set up an endowment fund with Rs600 million to generate income for assisting the poor and the needy.” He said the districts would be “urged” to either join the provincial endowment fund or create their own. He said the poor and the needy would not be left at the mercy of market forces. They would be protected.

He said the government was shifting away from existing “input” budgeting to “performance” budgeting. He said the departments are now told to “review their performance at the end of every quarter to see achievements and targets”. It was being done to “make them more accountable and answerable to the people”.