LAHORE, June 10: Punjab Finance Minister Hasnain Bahadur Dareshek said on Friday that he was hopeful that the “interests of all provinces would be protected in the sixth NFC award”.
Speaking at a post-budget conference, he expressed the hope that no “injustice would be done to any province” in the next NFC award. He said all provinces had empowered President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to take a “final decision on the NFC at a meeting held more than a week ago”.
It may be recalled that finalization of the NFC award has been delayed for about three years due mainly to a dispute between the provinces on the formula for horizontal distribution of resources to be disbursed among them under the new award.
The Punjab wants the distribution on the basis of populations. Sindh is demanding a multiple indicator formula, carrying certain weightage for revenue collection.
Asked what will be the reaction of the Punjab if the president accommodated Sindh’s point of view on the horizontal distribution formula, the minister said the question was based on supposition. “I think it is inappropriate to talk on suppositions when all the provinces have given the president the power to take a decision (on it),” he said.
He said it would not be a problem to incorporate the impact of the new award in the provincial budget if it was announced during the currency of the next financial year. He said the impact could be “incorporated in the budget in the revised budgetary estimates and supplementary grants.”
Answering a question, he defended his contention that about one million new employments had been created in the Punjab during the current fiscal because of hefty development spending and policy interventions.
He said some 400,000 to 500,000 jobs were created in the province during the 1990s when the Punjab’s GDP grew at an average 4.2 per cent. “This year the provincial GDP has grown well over eight per cent, which means that at least 1,000,000 jobs have been generated in the province.”
He said it did not fall within the purview of the provinces to reduce prices. “It is the job of the federal government,” he said, and added the provinces could only formulate policies which could help reduce poverty of income and services.
It was told that development budget utilization had been close to 68 per cent in the first three quarters of the current fiscal. It is anticipated to cross the last year’s utilization rate of 90 per cent by the end of the year.