November 11, 2003	Tuesday	Ramazan 15, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has directed all the four provinces to restructure their tax and duties administration besides calling for bringing down establishment costs and civil service expenditures.

Sources on Monday said that the prime minister wanted an improved tax/revenue administration in provinces to mobilize more resources to contain the rising poverty level.

He has also reportedly expressed his displeasure over the delay in achieving the objectives of good governance in federal and provincial government departments.

The prime minister believed that fiscal and financial management and real ownership of devolution and administrative decentralization by the provincial governments were urgently required. The prime minister said that devolving provincial taxes to local governments should be the ultimate goal so that “real change” could be witnessed, specially for resolving the problems of the common man.

Sources said that the Mr Jamali regretted that the government had been unable to create enough jobs during the past one year and urged the officials concerned to accelerate reforms to address what he termed the “serious issue of poverty.”

In this regard, he mentioned the early creation of the proposed private sector-led SME Industrial Estate Management Agency for locating new estates near existing industry clusters to be built and managed with local entrepreneurs’ help.

The prime minister was informed by the Punjab government that 100,000 acres of state land would be distributed to encourage low housing schemes with proprietary rights to residents of slums. Access to residential sites in rural areas is estimated to be 150,000 plots and that social safety nets will be created for targeted interventions through Zakat funds and Bait-ul-Maal. Targeted food subsidy has also been planned in poorer districts.

For increasing the agriculture productivity, a project would be launched in the province to increase the cotton harvest area by one million acres in three years, replacing water-intensive crops like sugarcane and rice.

Sources said that the Punjab government informed the prime minister that improved access to governmental records was allowed to ensure public accountability and transparency. Similarly, improved systems of appraisal, monitoring, feedback and evaluation has begun to check corruption in government and other public sector departments.

The planning functions of the province were being developed to have an effective inter-governmental consultative mechanism between provincial and local governments for undertaking agreed sector-specific strategies. Enhancement of the planning capacity at the local government level was one of the main priorities of the province.

The prime minister, sources said, was further informed that all those subsidies which did not explicitly target the poor were being phased out and that merit based promotions and performance based evaluation was being ensured by Punjab government.

Other three provinces were also being expected to furnish the details of their plans to improve the lot of the common man through improved services.