KARACHI, June 12: Sindh is expected to have its first-ever Provincial Finance Award on Thursday.

“We are trying to see that the Award is announced by tomorrow evening” said the Sindh Minister of Finance, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, in an interview with APP here on Wednesday.

Our commission is holding meetings daily to finalize the Award for which two committees, one headed by Jehangir Siddiqi and the other by Sohail Wajahat, have been setup and assigned with working out the formulas for current expenditure and development which would be integrated later.

He said a lot of ground work had been completed and the pattern of development schemes and current expenditures of the districts reviewed.

He said different formulas had been chalked out keeping in view the viability and requirements of districts, their backwardness, revenue collection and population.

Replying to a question, Dr Shaikh said there was no direct relevance of the Provincial Award with the National Award, but the basic principles of the two were almost the same.

He pointed out that the National Award dealt with the division of resources between the centre and the provinces, and the Provincial Award was concerned with the division of resources between the province and the districts.

The minister said the principles as to what should be the formula between the centre and provinces were also being applied in the preparation of the Provincial Award between the province and the districts.

Sindh will be the first province to announce the award. Other provinces will follow the suit.

Answering a question, Dr Shaikh said our full attention is focused on completing the work at the earliest possible so that the work on budget-making could also be taken in hand, because the results of the Award would be reflected in the budget.

Replying to a question about the highlights of the Award, he said first of all, this would be a formula-based award with no discretion available to government officials. This would be the first time that the provinces and the districts would be able to have a prior knowledge about their respective receipts which, in turn, would prove helpful in strengthening the system of devolution.

He said the Award would also ensure a transparent preparation of the budget.

Answering another question, he said 2.5 per cent of the GST would also be made available to the districts through the Award. —APP