23 May 2004	Sunday	03 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

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ISLAMABAD, May 22: Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali has convened a crucial meeting of the four chief ministers and all the official and non-official members of the National Finance Commission on Sunday as a last-ditch effort to achieve consensus on sixth NFC award.

This was confirmed by all the four provincial finance ministers after a marathon but inconclusive informal meeting of the NFC presided over by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz here on Saturday. Non-official members and secretary finance Navid Ahson also attended the meeting.

"The meeting (with the prime minister) is expected to be decisive and result-oriented", said NWFP senior minister Sirajul Haq. He said the key was in the hands of Shaukat Aziz and he could resolve the issue if he so desired.

The meeting was not scheduled but the federal and provincial ministers took advantage of the Annual Plan Coordination Committee (APCC) meeting that was convened to finalize its recommendation on next year's annual plan for the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting to be held on June 3.

A government official said the prime minister is expected to ask his finance minister to increase the provincial share to 48.5 per cent or at least 48 per cent to hammer out an agreement on NFC. One per cent of divisible pool comes to around Rs5.4 billion and 48 per cent translates into about Rs260 billion.

All the provincial finance ministers were asked to consult their chief ministers in the night or early in the morning before coming to the prime minister at 11am and brief them about the discussions at the informal meeting.

Sindh finance minister Syed Sardar Ahmad when asked about the outcome of the informal meeting he said: "We are where we were" indicating that there was no progress on finalization of the award. He hoped the meeting to be presided over by the prime minister on Sunday should be decisive.

Mr Haq said the meeting was told that the NFC was not a political issue for NWFP and Balochistan rather it was human a issue because they would not be able to present their budgets in case a consensus was not achieved because if the 47 per cent provincial share is distributed among the population of Pakistan, it would come to just Rs86 per person.

He said we have offered to the federal government to show flexibility and increase provincial share and the provinces would also respond.

A senior finance ministry official said there would be two separate pools for distribution of resources among the provinces - one based on about 85 per cent population and the second containing all the remaining factors namely inverse population density, backwardness and revenue generation.

He said the provinces had their own differences and the federal finance ministry was facilitating them to narrow them down. He said the provinces also made some progress that could lead to resolve the problem.

He said the horizontal distribution of divisible pool and distribution of GST were the main irritants.

He said Punjab finance minister Husnain Bahadur Dareshuk had not come to the meeting with the mandate from his government to give up its demand for resources distribution on population basis and was asked by all to show flexibility.

Balochistan Finance Minister Syed Ehsan Shah confirmed that provinces could not bridge their own differences which was the real question to distribute resources whatever the federation may offer. He said bigger provinces were very rigid in their positions.

He said the Sindh-Balochistan dialogue on gas development surcharge that had broken down previously was back on track and hoped his province would get about 68 per cent of the total Rs15 billion GDS, although the whole of GDS was coming from Balochistan.

He said no decision could be made on horizontal distribution of resources but progress has been made to achieve consensus. To a question, he said there was still a lot of time to finalize the NFC award as the provinces were also making their budget estimates on both options, i.e. on previous award and the sixth award.

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