ISLAMABAD, July 21: President General Pervez Musharraf has said that provinces will have increased autonomy and a fair distribution of resources in the new National Finance Commission (NFC) award. “The Concurrent List in the Constitution is being reviewed by parliamentarians and a solution will be found about provincial autonomy,” he said in his address to the nation on Thursday.
The president said that the government would ensure provincial harmony by removing ‘genuine grievances’ of smaller provinces. He said most of the development projects were being implemented in smaller provinces with maximum allocations.
“All chief ministers have reposed confidence in me for a judicious NFC award which will shortly be decided,” he said.
About big dams, he said had there been Kalabagh dam the NWFP would not have faced huge floods. He regretted that water from river Chitral and river Swat, that had been going waste, should have been utilized by building a bigger dam.
“But I assure you that I would solve this problem by shortly deciding about some big dams,” Gen Musharraf said, calling upon the people of Sindh and the NWFP to support him in finalizing such projects. “Both these smaller provinces will be a major beneficiary of a new dam.”
The government, he said, was spending Rs166 billion on resolving the issue of water shortage. “But without building bigger dams, we will not be able to solve this problem,” he cautioned.
Clean drinking water, the president said, should reach all people of Pakistan by 2007-08 and added that he would ensure this.
Re: Small bit of good news coming out of Pakistan…
NFC is the biggest obstacle to Provincial autonomy. Feds take all the taxes to Islamabad and then make the states beg for their share. This makes Feds something like the Godfather handing out “Baksheesh” to states.
Time for NFC to go. Feds should only collect income tax and some import taxes. The rest should go to smaller entities like states, and municipalities. Excise tax, sales tax for states, and states should be able to charge a smaller amount of income tax. States should allow a bit of financial autonomy to municipalities so they can collect property related taxes.
On big dams, Punjab and Frontier should have joint ownership. We belong to the same country, if the dam happens to span two states, then both states should own it. Current system of the ownership based on dam’s headwork (or controlling gates) is obsolete.
p.s. good to see MAToos are finally being rounded up in Islamabad. Fazlu phajja just lost his secretary.
Re: Small bit of good news coming out of Pakistan...
^ agreed .. the NFC only deals with fiscal revenue and not taxation powers and even in revenue distribution the mechanism is grossly unfair to the smaller provinces..provincial autonomy would include actual control issues which are being dealt with by good half of the present federal ministries..I don't see that changing
Re: Small bit of good news coming out of Pakistan...
On provinical autonomy, Frontier has suffered the most. Time now to get rid of FCR and the FATA. Feds have no need to impose special rules on Tribal areas. They all now should be under the state rule from Peshawar.
Re: Small bit of good news coming out of Pakistan...
I think you have to give more control to Provinces over their investment... Let them woo their own investors for example. A lot of the taxes have to be localized. And we have to fix the local government sysytem so that the provinces have control over nazims. The center should be their to facilitate and to adminstor etc..
But yeah, the NFC does seem futile, it needs to be rationalized some how..