ISLAMABAD: Provinces have asked the centre to include the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the National Action Plan in the next National Finance Commission Award for allocation of funds.

Briefing newsmen on Monday, Prof Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, Chairman of the sub-committee of the NFC on Allocation Efficiency and Expenditure analysis at the Federal and Provincial Levels said the draft report had been finalised and it would be discussed at a meeting of finance secretaries of the four provinces.

After getting their opinions, it would be submitted to the federal finance ministry, he added.

Prof Ibrahim is a private member of the NFC committee from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The federal government has constituted four working groups for formulation of the 9th NFC Award.

Punjab heads a working group on Resource Mobilisation at the Federal and Provincial Level, Sindh on Devolved Vs Integrated Tax Structure Evaluation of the Tax Collection Framework in Pakistan and the federal government on Rationalisation of Subsidies and Grants.

Muzafar Said, Finance Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Dr Ayesha Ghaus Pasha of Punjab attended the meeting along with representatives of Sindh and Balochistan.

Punjab suggested inclusion of the 18th Amendment in the NFC Award. It also proposed establishment of a centralised database.

The representative of Sindh briefed the meeting on steps taken regarding the next NFC Award. He stressed the need for formulating laws to ensure online access to budgets documents, financial responsibilities and debt limitations at the provincial and federal levels.

Balochistan’s representative raised questions over formulation of the sub-committee’s report. The federal additional finance secretary informed the meeting that a summary for nomination of a private member from Punjab had been sent to the President of Pakistan for approval.

The KP finance minister called for immediate notification of the private member of Punjab as the NFC could not meet for nine months just because of this.

Sindh and Punjab have already finalised their draft reports.

Talking to Dawn, Prof Ibrahim said the report was prepared on the basis of allocation of resources under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) over the past five years. Projections for the next five years were made on the same basis.

It was also agreed to consider sustainable development goals (SDGs) for allocation of resources, he added.

The federal additional finance secretary, who is also NFC secretary, informed the meeting that the KP government had requested an increase in its share in allocation for the war on terror from one per cent to 5pc in the next award.

He said the KP government had also demanded Rs66bn for implementation of NAP.

The KP finance minister urged the federal government to release the pending Rs148bn to his province as per the calculation of the technical committee. The committee proposed Rs18bn as net hydel profit for KP. He said that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had agreed to release the amount but this had not been done yet.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2016