Finance minister lets finance secretary, do the talking.
LAHORE:
The government hopes to constitute a Provincial Financial Commission (PFC) after holding local government elections in October 2013.
The commission -- a provincial version of the National Finance Commission and mandatory under the 18th Amendment -- will work out a formula for the allocation of resources across the province.
Questions about the commission were the focus of the post budget press conference held by Finance Minister Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman, Local Government Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan and Finance Secretary Tariq Bajwa on Tuesday.
Rehman restricted himself to reading a written statement. The questions put to the government were answered by Khan and Bajwa.
Asked why the government had not constituted the commission ahead of the budget and how it had determined the amounts to be allocated to various areas of the province, Bajwa said that according to the law, district nazims and tehsil nazims had to be members of the commission. The local governments are yet to be formed, he said, so the Punjab government had distributed the funds among districts “keeping in view the reports of the last PFC”.
He did not know when the last PFC had been constituted.
Khan interrupted him to announce that the Local Government Act might be passed in the next assembly session and local government elections held by October.
Asked for the formula under development funds had been allocated to south Punjab, central Punjab and north Punjab, Khan said Rs93 billion had been allocated for south Punjab “not entirely on the basis of population but also to end the sense of deprivation” in the region.
Reporter wanted to know the exact amount of development funds earmarked for Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad. Only the Planning and Development Board chairman could answer the question, Khan said.
Asked why the government had not allocated funds for carving out two new provinces (South Punjab and Bahawalpur), Khan said the PML-N would consult its allies and establish a “credible commission” on the creation of new provinces. Funds for new provinces would be allocated after the committee’s recommendations were available.
Khan defended the decision to raise salaries and pensions of government employees by a uniform 10 per cent, instead 10 and 15 per cent like the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Civil servants too, had opposed varying raises, he said.
The minister also defended the capital gains tax the government plans to levy. The government, he said, was hoping to collect Rs2 billion from it. Thousands of acres of cultivated land around Lahore has been declared residential but it will be 30 years before they are developed. The tax, said Khan, would “stop speculative buying and selling of property.”
Khan said that taxing the rich showed the ‘wisdom of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’. He recalled that in his last tenure, Sharif had imposed a tax on luxury vehicles “but unfortunately people started registering their vehicles in Islamabad and other provinces”.
Bajwa answered questions regarding the overdraft and utilisation of development funds. About the former, he said that the law allowed the government to borrow up to salaries of six weeks from the State Bank.
Asked why the government had failed to use more of the development funds, he said it was because of the “general elections”.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 19th, 2013.
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