December 15, 2003	Monday	Shawwal 20, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 14: The Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf chairman, Imran Khan, on Sunday said the NFC formula was outdated and was likely to exacerbate the growing disparity in the per capita incomes of the provinces.

In a statement, the PTI chief said basing the entire revenue sharing formula on population alone would deprive the regions and provinces of their fundamental human rights. The present formula ignores the factors where the federating units differ widely in terms of per capita income, population density, administrative infrastructure, ability to raise taxes and fiscal discipline. He demanded that the basis of determining resource distribution between the provinces should be equity and efficiency.

He suggested that before the distribution of resources, independent economic surveys should be conducted to establish the Gross Provincial Domestic Product to determine income levels for each province and within provinces. He said based on the results of the surveys, greater weightage should be given to the resource allocations to bridge the gap between the lowest and highest per capita Gross Province Domestic Product.

The federal share in the net proceeds of divisible pool taxes should be reduced from 62.5 per cent to 50 per cent, thus increasing the share of the provinces from 37.5 per cent to 50 per cent, he said.