LAHORE, June 17: The Provincial Finance Commission Award will be finalized before the end of this month for formula-driven resources’ distribution among the 34 districts, 122 tehsil municipal administrations and 3,453 union councils in the Punjab.

“The Nazims have already been briefed on the PFC formula devised for the distribution of fiscal resources among the local bodies. They have also been provided the draft of the award and their input on it sought,” officials said on Tuesday. They added that the final award would be ready before this fiscal was out.

Under the Local Government Ordinance 2001, the provinces are required to make a single-line transfer of resources for both non-development and development expenditure to the local governments. The resources transferred by the provincial governments are to be distributed among the bodies according to the formula prescribed in the PFC award which would be valid for three years.

Owing to delay in the finalization of the provincial award, the local governments in the Punjab are getting fiscal resources under an interim PFC award given at the time of announcement of the budget for 2002-03 in June last year.

The Provincial Finance Commission has considered 33 indicators while devising the formula for distributing resources. Population and backwardness of the districts, TMAs and the UCs are given the maximum weightage in the formula.

The Punjab government has provided Rs63.858 billion, including Rs9 billion for their development schemes, to the local bodies in the budget for 2003-04 compared to Rs60.353 billion allocated in the budget for 2002-03.

Moreover, the provincial government has also written off about Rs4 billion debt of the TMAs and provided additional resources of Rs2 billion on account of property tax to them. The measures have been taken to provide “financial relief to the TMAs” and ensure their efficient functioning.

The districts have been given allocations for their respective development programmes out of the Annual Development Programme of the province.