Finance Ministry formulates 7 sub-groups for NFC Award

F.P Report

ISLAMABAD: On Thursday, Federal Ministry formulated seven sub-groups to prepare workable recommendations for the upcoming NFC Award, during the inaugural meeting of the 10th National Finance Commission (NFC).

While chairing the meeting Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh,

called upon all the members to do their best to come up with focused and workable recommendations to make the 10th NFC Award successful, according to press statement issued by the Finance Ministry.

According to press statement issued by the Finance Ministry,

the sub-groups were formed with specific tasks on the basis of terms of references (TORs) of NFC, with the direction to present recommendations before the august forum in due course of time.

On the occasion, the Finance Minister commented that NFC had been mandated by the Constitution to recommend the President for harmonious distribution of financial resources between the federation and the provinces of the net proceeds of the taxes.

“NFC is a forum to develop harmony between the federal and the provinces and to work out a sustainable resource sharing formula with mutual consensus,” he added.

Whereas, during the meeting the Federal Secretary Finance delineated the Terms of Reference (TORs) of the NFC and the main tasks before the NFC.

This includes developing of a sustainable macroeconomic framework for the 10th NFC Award, vertical revenue sharing, selection of indicators for horizontal distribution formula, simplification of taxes to facilitate businesses and bringing erstwhile FATA at par with the rest of the country.

During the discussions, members of the Commission highlighted developing financial issues, including the need to increase the size of the pie for everyone, rising burden of pension payments and need for closer coordination between federal and provincial revenue collecting agencies.

Furthermore in this meeting the participants had a comprehensive discussion on the need for harmonization of revenue collection operations at respective levels of the federal and provincial governments to broaden fiscal space and streamline revenue collection.

The inaugural session was participated by Chief Minister Sindh, Syed Murad Ali Shah; Finance Minister Punjab, Makhdoom Hashim Jawan Bakht; Finance Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra;  Finance Minister Balochistan, Zahoor Ahmed Buledi and non ex-officio members including Tariq Bajwa (Punjab), Musharaf Rasul Cyan (KP), Dr. Kasier Bengali (Balochistan), Dr. Asad Sayeed (Sindh) and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance and Finance Departments of provinces, it added.