May 27, 2006	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 28, 1427

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HYDERABAD, May 26: The adviser to the Sindh Chief Minister on Finance, Mr M. A. Jalil, has said that departments of the federal government are delaying payment amounting to millions of rupees under various heads to Sindh.

He said that as a result the province was facing financial constraints and under the new National Finance Commission award there would be a marginal difference in Sindh’s share.

Talking to Dawn at the circuit house on Thursday, the adviser referred to the issue of cash development loans involving the federal government which was recovering loans with high mark-up rate of 18 per cent.

He said that with the passage of time the ratio of loans dropped but provinces had demanded that the federal government should allow them to retire the debt by obtaining loans from banks with low mark-up and then clear central government’s liabilities.

He said that the other option for provinces was that they should clear the liabilities through their own resources which were normally kept in treasury where they did not get any interest.

He said that no decision had yet been taken in this respect despite a lapse of several years while the Sindh government was paying billions of rupees every year to the federal government in shape of interest.

“Now we have learnt that the federal government is going to take decision regarding CDLs of 70s but it is still unclear”, he said.

He said that if the issue was decided Sindh would get benefit of Rs2 billion every year.

He said that the issue had been raised 15 days back in Islamabad.

He said that Sindh had provided lands to the federal government for various projects and schemes but its cost was not decided and in this contest millions of rupees were to be paid by the government to Sindh.

He said that the actual cost of land was to be paid.

He said that the federal government was also not settling the issue of amount received by the NAB under plea bargain in Sindh.

“The NAB keeps only 20 per cent of recovered money and remaining amount is transferred to provinces as per procedure but the federal government is not paying us our share”, he said.

He said that the NAB made recovery from various accused under plea bargain and after deducting its own commission transferred the amount to the central government.

“We believe that around Rs200 million are to be paid to us by the central government because the NAB received 20 per cent of the recovered money in Sindh and transferred remaining amount to centre”, he said.

He said that the federal government had made payment to Sindh for recovery of different taxes including the excise duty but again it was not being paid to the province.

“If all this money is transferred to us it can be utilised for our development works. They will have to pay this amount but they are only delaying it”, he remarked.

Mr Jalil said that lands provided to the Pakistan railways for laying the tracks in the province but now the railways was disposing of this land considering it as surplus.

He said that the land should have been transferred to Sindh instead of being sold by the railways.

“The issue has become bone of contention between the Sindh government and the railways ministry. One year back the president had decided that 40 per cent of the money disposed of by railways would be paid to Sindh. We agreed to it but the railway ministry is still selling, auctioning or launching projects on surplus lands”, he said.