June 19, 2006	Monday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 22, 1427

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PESHAWAR, June 18: The level of poverty and under-development should also be one of the criteria for distribution of federal revenue under the National Finance Commission (NFC) award and federal funds should not be distributed only on the basis of population.

This was stated by NWFP’s Senior Minister Sirajul Haq during a post-budget press conference here on Sunday.

The minister said that the NWFP government had ‘unwillingly’ accepted the amended NFC award, adding that the new award had not been made by taking stock of ground realities.

“The NFC award should not be formulated on the basis of political considerations,” said Mr Haq. He called for setting up a department to take care of the working of the NFC, adding that the commission should make a fair analysis before drawing any conclusions.

He said that it was impossible to formulate an effective NFC award without properly determining the actual needs of every federating unit.

The NWFP, he maintained, would have been happy if its recommendations vis-a-vis allocating 60 per cent of resources to provinces and 40 per cent going to the Center were accepted.

Stressing the need for changing NFC formula, he said that distribution of funds on the basis of a single factor was wrong and an injustice to financially-weak provinces.

He urged the federal government to incorporate NWFP’s recommendations in the amended NFC award and start working on the new award right from the start of the next financial year.

Justifying demand for greater flow of funds, he said that the provincial government’s annual wage bill had grown by a total of Rs13bn during the last four years because of frequent pay increases while in 2006-07 it would grow by Rs3.3bn. Similarly, last year, the province had to bear additional expenses amounting to Rs5bn because of 18 to 24 per cent salary increase.

Secretary finance, NWFP, Mr Ziaur Rehman and additional chief secretary Dastagir Akhtar also attended the press conference.