The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has issued a warning, stating that it will not consent to any additional extensions of the 7th National Finance Commission award due to changes in the province’s poverty and population figures after the Federal Administrative Tribal Areas (now tribal districts) merged with the province.
The adviser to the finance chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Muzammil Aslam, told Dawn, “We made numerous approaches to the finance ministry, including telephone calls and letters, with the most recent communication on Sept 27 on the NFC issue, but got no response.”
Despite the budget showing a surplus, he stated that the province government will not forfeit its rightful portion of the NFC reward.
It claimed that over 6.1 million inhabitants of the combined districts had not been able to use the intergovernmental funds transfer system under the NFC award for the almost six years following the Fata-KP merger.
According to the agency, province chief minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur brought attention to the issues that tribal district inhabitants face as a result of the 25th Constitutional Amendment during a tribal jirga on September 5.
It said that in addition to talking about other administrative and financial matters, the jirga encouraged interacting with the federal government to guarantee the prompt delivery of cash and to assert the province’s rightful portion of national resources following the Fata-KP merger.
It further stated that although the federal government had pledged to pay for the “herculean task,” the “resolve” seems to have waned with time.
The department noted that the province was becoming cash-starved on several other sources of federal fiscal transfers in addition to the 10-year development plan’s Accelerated Implementation Program’s decreasing allocations and releases.
It said that although Fata remained a federally governed region, the 7th NFC award did not allot any specific monies to it, yet the award equalization gave Balochistan larger per capita allocations and acknowledged the requirements of other provinces in the formula.
