NFC Award meeting remains ‘inconclusive’

By Nauman Tasleem

LAHORE: Representatives of all provinces could not succeed in forging a consensus over the contentious issues of horizontal-resource sharing during a meeting of the National Finance Commission (NFC) award on Thursday.

Sources said Balochistan would get around two percent more, however, the share of the other three provinces would decrease marginally.

They said the federal government had agreed to shed its share under the vertical formula to 56 percent from 46 percent. This major increase in the provinces’ share has come as a relief to all four CMs.

Due to lingering issues and a stalemate on key points, the scheduled press briefing, which was to be addressed by Federal Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen, had to be cancelled twice on Thursday. On Wednesday, Tareen had said there would be “good news” on Thursday, but did not talk to reporters. However, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Senator Ishaq Dar said the meeting would continue on Friday (today).

The time and venue was changed twice. Earlier, it was decided that the media would be briefed at a local hotel but later the venue was shifted to the CM’s Secretariat, where all arrangements were finalised and it was continued that the chief ministers would brief reporters on the outcome of the meeting.

At the eleventh hour, Ishaq Dar and Punjab Finance Minister Tanveer Ashraf Kaira told reporters that negotiations were still underway.

Sources claimed that overall share of Balochistan under the horizontal sharing would be boosted to 9.2 percent from the present 7.1 percent. Punjab’s share will be curtailed to 51.9 percent from present 53 percent. Sindh will get 23.8 percent against previous 24 percent while the NWFP would be given 14.24 percent share against previous allocation of 14.89 percent.

Ishaq Dar said all issues related to the vertical distribution of resources had come under discussion. He also said some issues, pertaining to sharing resources under horizontal formula, were still being deliberated.

Hope: He expressed the hope that all pending issues would be resolved today (Friday).