26 February 2004	Thursday	05 Muharram 1425

ISLAMABAD, Feb 25: The federal government has asked the Punjab authorities to soften their stand on keeping population the single criterion for the distribution of resources among the provinces.

A concerned official told Dawn here on Wednesday that the Punjab government has been asked to also take into account the issues like "poverty and backwardness" beside population with a view to offer adequate resources to all the provinces from the federal divisible pool.

He said Sindh, the NWFP and Balochistan had adopted a "joint position" and were asking the federal government to prevail upon Punjab authorities so that differences over the issue could be reduced.

"Now efforts are being made to narrow down differences, specially by asking Punjab to concede, so that new resource distribution formula could be finalised with consensus before the next NFC meeting at Quetta," he said, adding main issue related to the provinces and not the federal government.

Responding to a question, he said the president and the prime minister were calling for increased share of the provinces in the new NFC award. "But we have told them that provinces could get 45 per cent plus share which mean that it could be further stretched to a maximum of 47 per cent but not 50:50 as is being demanded by the provinces," the official said.

"The president and the prime minister have been informed that by acceding to the demand of 50:50 shares, the centre would go into negative," he said. He further said that there was no immediate plan to reduce the federal government expenditures by shutting down various ministries and divisions and that unnecessary non-development spending was already being curtailed at various levels.