Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, chairedthe inaugural meeting of the 10th National Finance Commission (NFC) todayat the Finance Division.
The Finance Minister welcomed all the participants. While speaking on theoccasion, the Finance Minister stated that NFC has been mandated by theConstitution to recommend to the President for amicable distribution offinancial resources between the Federation and the Provinces of the netproceeds of the taxes.
NFC is a forum to develop harmony between the Federal and the Provinces andto work out a sustainable resource sharing formula with mutual consensus,he added.
Federal Secretary Finance outlined the Terms of Reference (TORs) of the NFCand the main tasks before the NFC which includes developing a sustainablemacroeconomic framework for the 10th NFC Award, vertical revenue sharing,selection of indicators for horizontal distribution formula, simplificationof taxes to facilitate businesses and bringing erstwhile FATA at par withthe rest of the country.
During the deliberations, members of the Commission highlighted emergentfinancial issues, including the need to increase the size of the pie foreveryone, the rising burden of pension payments and the need for closercoordination between federal and provincial revenue collecting agencies.
The participants discussed the need for harmonization of revenue collectionoperations at respective levels of the federal and provincial governmentsto broaden fiscal space and streamline revenue collection.
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The meeting formulated seven sub-groups with specific tasks on the basis ofTORs of the Commission with the direction to present recommendations beforethe august forum in due course of time.
The Finance Minister called upon all the members to do their best to comeup with focussed and workable recommendations to make the 10th NFCAward-successful.
Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah, Finance Minister Punjab MakhdoomHashim Jawan Bakht, Finance Minister KP Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra, FinanceMinister Balochistan Mr. Zahoor Ahmed Buledi and non-ex-officio membersincluding Tariq Bajwa (Punjab), Musharaf Rasul Cyan (KP), Dr. KasierBengali (Balochistan), Dr. Asad Sayeed (Sindh) and senior officials of theMinistry of Finance/Finance Departments of provinces participated in themeeting.
