June 16, 2006	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 19, 1427

ISLAMABAD, June 15: The federal government has asked the provinces to raise additional resources to adequately implement their development plans in 2006-07.

“Provinces will get an all-time high Rs378bn in next fiscal year compared to outgoing year’s Rs301bn under the amended National Finance Commission (NFC) award. But still they need to manage additional resources to largely meet their development needs,” said Dr Salman Shah, adviser to the prime minister on finance.

He told Dawn the provinces would get Rs77bn more in 2006-07 including the increased amount of grants and subventions from the federal divisible pool.

He said the provincial governments were authorised to introduce new taxes in their forthcoming budgets. However, this would be decided by the provinces as to which tax they wanted to levy in their budgets, Dr Shah added.

The adviser said that substantial funds, allocated to the provinces in the next budget, would help them to start new developmental projects for the welfare of masses.

In reply to a question, he said that subsidy had been provided to the people in the new budget to fight price hike. This increased subsidy on many food items, he believed, was unique and would help stabilise prices.

He also said that once all the provincial budgets were announced, the federal government officials would sit with the provinces to finalise plans to take action against hoarders and profiteers.

Dr Shah said that a decision had been taken to appoint Price Magistrates in every district as soon as possible so that hoarders and profiteers could be brought to book. "This job will be done immediately after the presentation of provincial budgets,” he said.

He said that people had started getting subsidised food items especially sugar and pulses because of their ready availability. He said that utility stores were being regularly provided essential items including 33,000 tons of sugar every month.

He also said that conversion of Monopoly Control Authority into Competition Commission was largely expected to ensure price stability.

The adviser said that the government would increase the support price of pulses to ensure that growers did not suffer in case of import of pulses by the private sector.