KARACHI, May 22: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said that the size of the divisible pool will have to be increased to give each province its due share in the National Finance Commission (NFC) award. He was talking to editors of Sindhi newspapers and electronic media at Governor’s House here on Saturday.
“It is the size of the cake (that matters). Just cutting it differently will give you a temporary relief but this is not the solution,” the prime minister said while answering a question. “The solution is that the pie has to get bigger to provide a due share to each province,” he added.
He said that the federal government’s share was not an issue but the problem was that the four provinces had yet not agreed (on a resource distribution formula). He said that the new NFC award required an agreement among the provinces and the government had tried and was still trying to resolve the issue. “We have told provinces that if they could reach the agreement even after six months, we will adjust (the NFC formula).”
Answering a question about the huge federal debt of the Sindh government, the prime minister said that the centre encouraged the province to borrow money from the World Bank to retire the debt.
He agreed that Sindh had peculiar problems due to its demographic and political challenges and its location as the economic hub of the country and, therefore, its issues had to be handled differently. He said that a decision on the construction of water reservoirs would be taken with consensus and by setting priorities about which dam to build first.
He admitted that it was a sensitive issue and said that the government wanted to take along all the provinces and make a decision which satisfied every province after they were convinced that they would receive a rightful share and no province should get other’s share.
He said that the government would not take irrational decisions and added: “Whatever we do will be in national interest.” Mr Aziz said that water storage capacity was declining with the passage of time due to accumulation of silt in ageing dams. He said that the government was spending billions of rupees on the lining of watercourses in all the provinces, which would improve water supply for crops.
He said that availability of water had improved along with better supply of inputs including credit, fertilisers, seeds and pesticides to farmers. Pointing out that the government was focussing on improving rural economy, he said that it was focusing on the ‘One village, one product’ concept to boost industrialization in rural areas.
Giving an example, he said that Hala could be picked for the manufacture of traditional blue tiles and pottery, wooden furniture and Ajrak with the help of new designs, bank credit and marketing.
The prime minister said that the government would provide expertise to the artisans of Sindh to improve their techniques and the standard of their products for value addition and exports. —-APP
