MULTAN: Distribution of federal revenues between the federal and provincial governments before any annual budget is an obligation under Article 160(3) of the Constitution. For this the National Finance Commission (NFC) must meet every six months. However, neither the NFC nor its implementation committee has met in over nine months, a clear breach of the Constitution on this most important matter.
There also is a thinking that the next budget should be presented by the incumbent government so as not to leave this task to the caretaker administration which is not empowered to discharge this constitutional duty. Thus, a tentative date of not later than March 31 is being pushed for the presentation of the budget for 2013-2014. Of course, it remains to be seen if any actual groundwork has commenced in this regard.
Consequently, there is much concern among the provinces. The practice so far has been for the federal government to consult the provinces well before the preparation of the federal budget. However, the ruling political parties are now mostly focused on the next election and seem to have all but forgotten the formulation of the next fiscal year’s budget.
Sher Muhammad Khan
Bahauddin Zakariya University
Published in The Express Tribune, February 18th, 2013.
