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| 02 April 2004 | Friday | 11 Safar 1425 |
PM to help forge consensus
ISLAMABAD, April 1: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali will chair a meeting here on Friday to discuss and help remove differences among the federal government and the provinces in order to finalize the next National Finance Commission award on time.
Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz is expected to brief the prime minister before the start of the Friday meeting on the progress made in various meetings, especially the last one held in Quetta two days earlier, in which the provinces reportedly once again refused to accept the population formula for the distribution of resources.
On being reached, the finance minister said that he was maintaining regular contact with all the four chief ministers to finalize a 'better' NFC award before the announcement of the next budget.
"I hope that Punjab would accept population-plus factors like poverty and backwardness so that new NFC award could be finalized with consensus", he said. Mr Aziz believed that the issue now rested with the provinces, and not with the Centre, to finalize the 6th NFC award.
"The Centre perhaps could offer an increased share to the provinces but primarily they have to overcome their differences on various other issues", he added.
The issues, he said, would come up for detailed discussion during Friday's meeting. The finance minister said that the "pie" was getting bigger, therefore, it was not correct to presume that the Centre was against increasing the share of the provinces from the divisible pool. The provinces are pressing for a 50 per cent share from the pool while the federal government is insisting that it can't go beyond 46 per cent.
Asked whether the federal government was ready to concede to the demand of the provinces to extend their share to 50 per cent, Mr Aziz said in absolute terms the provinces would certainly get a bigger share in the new award.
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