The procedure for the announcement of the 8th NFC Award, though slightly delayed, has begun. It is time to take stock of the gains or losses made by the 7th NFC Award and predict what benefits the next Award might bring to the country and its federating units.
The 7th award in 2009 owed its existence and utility to the gains made in the 18th Amendment. But largely everyone discusses only the economic gains, resources etc. in this context. What gets generally ignored is the sense of provincial harmony that this consensus 7th award achieved after a decade and a half or perhaps more.
The democratic process that underpinned the entire exercise cannot be underestimated. Yet, we have failed on certain counts. There was a promise to increase direct taxation and thus the overall share of revenue to be distributed but there hasn’t been much improvement in that regard. What is worse is that of the resources that do get transferred to the provinces, there is massive under-spending, especially of the development budget.
We have in today’s Special Report cited the case of just one province -- Sindh. In the last fiscal year, the health department in Sindh was able to utilise only 21 per cent of the allocated budget while only 27 per cent of the education was spent. This goes to show a lack of any sort of political commitment on the part of the provinces to work for the good of the common people.
There are misgivings about the forthcoming award. In the words of economist Asad Sayeed, since the political alignments of Punjab and the federal government are tied together unlike the last time, these two might try to reverse the gains of the last award.
Additionally, the local government laws call for the formation of Provincial Finance Commissions to ensure equal distribution among the districts, a darwback pointed out by Hassan Askari Rizvi, but there is "nothing to show on ground". One hopes there is some progress on this issue as well in the coming award.
These and other issues have been discussed in today’s Special Report.