LAHORE: The 9th National Finance Commission has agreed to make efforts tofinalize the NFC Award by December 31 this year.
A meeting of the commission chaired by Finance Minister Asad Umar in Lahoretoday (Friday) decided that the next meeting to be held before end of thenext month, will focus on FATA and the taxation aspects of ease of doingbusiness.
The Chairman emphasized the importance of a well deliberated and consensusbased National Finance Commission Award and said that all federating unitsshared a huge responsibility in that regard.
He reiterated that the provincial governments will be engaged in fiscalrelated discussion with IMF.
He also suggested that each federating unit should nominate a focal personfor data sharing to facilitate the working sub-groups.
The Finance Minister also stressed for strengthening NFC Secretariat andsaid that necessary measures will be taken in that regard.
Read Top Stories
The representative of Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa proposed a frameworkfor NFC deliberations aiming at equalizing fiscal resources acrossfederating units, equal access to public services for all citizens ofPakistan and expenditure efficiency at all levels of the federation.
All members agreed on the framework and lauded the efforts of thegovernment of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in this regard.
The six sub-groups, formulated during the first meeting in February, gavepresentation on various aspects of resources distribution as per the termsof reference assigned to the groups.
The main focus of all sub-groups’ deliberations was transparency,harmonization and sharing of data.
