The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has decided to raise the issue of the announcement of 9th National Finance Commission (NFC) Award with the newly elected Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. For this purpose, the provincial government has directed the Finance Department to prepare summary. Demoralized by the federal government, the provincial government has earlier decided to raise the matter with the President of Pakistan. However, after change of the prime minister, the KP government has now changed its strategy under which they will now dispatch the case to the new prime minister.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is going to demand of the prime minister for the issuance of directives to resolve the issue of the 9th NFC Award that is standing unresolved since the period of last three years and announce the new award with immediate effect.
In this connection, the provincial government is working on different options and one of them is the meeting of a delegation with prime minister. The provincial minister for finance, Muzaffar Said advocate will lead the delegation to pursue the prime minister on the issuance of a new NFC Award. However, final decision on sending delegation will be taken on the basis of the emerging situation.
The Finance Department has been directed to prepare a case for presentation before the prime minister with immediate effect so it could be dispatched to PM Office as soon as possible. The present 7th NFC Award was announced in 2010, when Yousaf Raza Gilani was Prime Minister and Shaukat Tareen as finance minister. 8th NFC was also constituted on 21st July 2010, but it did not give any Award.
The 7th NFC Award had already expired in 2015. However, the federal government is granting extension to it through Presidential Order since last three consecutive years. The 9th NFC was constituted on April 24, 2015 and its first meeting was held on 28th April, 2015. In its first meeting 9th NFC constituted four working groups to undertake thematic studies and put forth their recommendations for consideration by the commission.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was heading working group-III assigned with the task of preparation of a draft report on 'Allocation Efficiency and Expenditure Analysis at the Federal and Provincial levels. All four working groups including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa completed the task of compilation of their respective working group reports.
These reports were discussed in the 2nd meeting of the 9th NFC held on 28-11-2016 in Islamabad. The third meeting was held on 19-12-2016 in Islamabad wherein the federal government put forward the proposal of creation of National Security Fund by reserving 3 per cent of the divisible pool and allocation of 4 per cent of divisible pool for meeting expenditure related to special areas (ie Fata, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan).
In accordance with decision taken in the meeting, the provinces were required to provide their written comments/views on the proposals to be presented in the next meeting of the NFC. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has already shared its comments but the federal government has not convened the meeting so far.
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