LAHORE, April 24: The Provincial Finance Commission is considering 33 indicators to evolve the final formula-based PFC award for the next two years to allocate fiscal resources between local governments in the province.

A finance department official told Dawnfollowing a meeting of the PFC here on Thursday that the award was expected to be firmed up in the next meeting.

Different indicators being discussed by the commission include backwardness, level of development, level of basic amenities that are available to the people of the area, poverty, and population.

The provinces are required under the devolution of power plan to evolve a Provincial Finance Commission Award to allocate resources among local governments for three years.

The Punjab government had given the interim award for one year at the time of the announcement of the budget for the fiscal year 2002-03. The announcement of the final award was deferred pending finalization of the 6th National Finance Commission Award (NFC).

The provincial finance manager had indicated at that time that a final PFC award would be given before the end of September, 2002, for they expected the announcement of the 6th NFC award by that time.

“The finalization of the PFC was deferred because we wanted to know new resource allocation (for the provinces under the new NFC award),” a senior official said following the PFC meeting chaired by finance minister Sardar Hasnain Bahadur Dareshik. Besides, the official said: “It is not an easy task to distribute the resources between 34 districts, 122 tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) and over 3,400 union councils.”

“It takes a great deal of hard work to complete such a tedious job. Besides, it is not easy to decide indicators for distribution of resources among them,” the official said.

The local government resource allocation was raised to Rs60.70 billion for the fiscal year 2002-03 from Rs49.17 billion in 2001-02. This local governments share in the budget comprised 39.8 per cent of the total proceeds of the provincial consolidated fund in 2002-03 as compared to 33.8 per cent in the previous year.

Besides, the province is also transferring the amount received by it from Islamabad on account of octroi and zila tax, abolished in 1997, directly to the local governments as straight transfers.

The official said the final PFC award would not be changed and would complete its two-year tenure. He added the commission would take care that the resources were “distributed equitably with the lesser developed areas getting more funds”.—-Nasir Jamal