PESHAWAR, Aug 13: The Central Board of Revenue’s failure to meet the repeatedly downward revised revenue target during the last financial year did not allow the Centre to release funds to NWFP in accordance with the revised budgetary estimates of transferring funds to the provinces from the Federal Divisible Pool (FDP), according to official sources.
As per the revised budgetary estimates for the financial year 2001-02, NWFP was likely to get a total of Rs19.76 billion as its share from the FDP. The amount also included over Rs866 million funds transferred to NWFP as support to its local body institutions in lieu of octroi and zila tax.
However according to sources, the province had been released a total of Rs17.2 billion. This has left the provincial government to record a shortfall of well over Rs500 million in its straight transfers from the FDP during the financial year 2001-02.
However, the shortfall appears to be less than the amount the provincial finance managers had anticipated at the time of preparing provincial government’s budget for the new financial year.
In the provincial government’s White Paper document containing budgetary figures and fiscal plan for the fiscal 2002-03, it has been noted with concern that NWFP might not receive funds from the FDP for 2001-02 in accordance with the total amount reflected under the revised estimates.
In this respect, the government said that “it is anticipated that the actual receipts during 2001-02 will be less than the revised estimates by at least Rs1 billion primarily due to further decline in the CBR revenues and Provincial Own Receipts (PORs)”.
The estimated shortfall under the releases from FDP and PORs even against the revised estimates proved to be correct anticipation. Not only that the province received around Rs500 million less than the revised estimates of federal releases, all the more the province also recorded shortfall of an equal amount under its PORs.
Against the revised PORs target of Rs3.59 billion for the fiscal 2001-02, the province, according to sources, was not likely to end up anything beyond Rs3.2 billion.
In original, the shortfall under the direct federal transfers, according to official documents, appeared to be well over Rs2.5 billion. Federal government had initially projected to release over Rs21.7 billion to NWFP during the financial year 2001-02 as its share from the FDP. However, later the same projection was brought down to Rs19.76 billion after the Centre realized that it cannot transfer that much amount due to revenue shortfall recorded by the CBR during the last financial year.