KARACHI, April 12: Will the governors and chief ministers of the four provinces change their positions on resource distribution formula after their scheduled meeting with President Musharraf on Tuesday in Islamabad?
If they change their positions, how would they be able to communicate with their respective cabinet members and with their respective legislatures which have already taken positions on the NFC?
Can the NFC matter be taken up at the forum of Council of Common Interest (CCI), a constitutional body and then in the joint sitting of Senate and National Assembly?
No answers to these questions were available as neither the Sindh Finance Minister Syed Sardar Ahmad nor the private member on the NFC Abdul Karim Leghari were available for comments. But reports suggest that both the governor and chief minister have received briefing from the finance minister.
Only time will tell the answers of these three questions. But at this time it would not be inappropriate to recall a similar meeting President General Pervez Musharraf had convened in 2002 when the then NFC also headed by Shaukat Aziz hit a stalemate.
President General Pervez Musharraf had intervened in the proceedings of the current National Finance Commission after reports that there was a sharp division between the federation and the provinces on sharing of federal divisible pool and that three provinces want multiple criteria for sharing of resources among themselves but Punjab sticks to status quo and wants population to be the only basis for distribution of taxes revenue.
A similar intervention was made by the President in 2002 when he invited all the NFC members of that time and representatives of the provinces to discuss the resources distribution arrangements.
Those who attended that meeting in Islamabad say that President was shocked to learn that federal government levies as much as 17 and 18 per cent interest on the loan advances to the provinces.
He was distressed to know that because of the high interest rate and a system of loan repayment, which adjusts a very small sum of principal amount and bulk goes towards the interest payment.
This debt servicing arrangement has put tremendous pressure on provincial budgets. The federation has continued with this debt servicing arrangement from the provinces when it has sought and obtained for itself the repayment relief from its donors. The federation is not ready to give similar relief to the provinces.
President Musharraf was reported to have instructed an immediate revision of such debt servicing arrangement. The federal government provided relief only on one year loan to the provinces and that was the 2001-02 when Islamabad offered cash development loan for the last time.
All the four provinces continue to remain under heavy pressure of debt servicing. "No minutes of the meetings were recorded and when finance ministry was reminded of President's observations and instructions," a well placed source who attended that meeting with the President in the year 2002 recalled that "the finance ministry just ignored."
So much for the sanctity of the President's observations and instructions. President Musharraf and Prime Minister Jamali, on more than one occasions, promised funds for the mega development projects in Sindh and Balochistan.
The decision makers in Islamabad treated these promises with contempt and projects of the two provinces remain fund starved till this day. The work on the most controversial Thal Canal goes on at accelerated pace.
Will the next NFC award will also be a result of federal government prevailing upon the provinces? In decade of fifties the federal government had prevailed upon East Pakistan for a parity arrangement in matter of distribution of resources and jobs.
It took less than two decades for the result to come out. The year 1971 still remains a nightmare for all those who wanted a democratic and federal Pakistan.
