PESHAWAR, Jan 31: The PPP has expressed concern over a resolution passed by the Sindh Assembly on Thursday demanding the share of provinces in the divisible pool on the basis of tax generation.

Talking to newsmen at the Peshawar Press Club on Friday, the PPP’s parliamentary party leader in the NWFP Assembly Akbar Khan termed the resolution an unjust move against other provinces.

He said the resolution was aimed at changing the entire tax system and replacing the population formula with the tax generation capacity of each province. At present, he said, all the provinces sent their incomes to the divisible pool and the National Finance Commission distributed it among the provinces on the population basis.

Mr Khan said they agreed with the Sindh Assembly that the NFC should distribute 45 per cent of the total collection amongst the provinces. He claimed the federal government was reluctant to constitute the NFC anew as there was no finance minister.

If the Sindh Assembly’s demands were to be considered genuine, he argued, then the NWFP should be given a right to sell its water to other provinces to enhance funds generation. “Either the federal government should pay us (the NWFP) Rs309 billion outstanding against Wapda or attach it to the next NFC Award and declare it mandatory payment to the NWFP,” he said.

Mr Khan wondered how Sindh senior minister Syed Sardar Ahmed, who had been chief secretary in the past, had drafted and tabled the resolution. “If adopted, the resolution will do away with the entire tax collection system and the NWFP will get only two per cent from the divisible pool,” he pointed out.

He said the NWFP contributed five per cent to the federal taxes and got about 14 per cent from the divisible pool. The resolution tabled in the Sindh Assembly by a former bureaucrat was aimed at jeopardizing the economies of other provinces, he claimed.

The PPP leader said he would approach all the parliamentary groups in the house to work for getting the rights of the NWFP on the Indus river water being used, free of cost, by the other provinces.