Provinces’ share cut from DP

Islamabad would slash revenue shares of provincial governments under National Finance Commission (NFC) Award as the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has failed to achieve its tax collection target. The FBR is struggling to achieve its tax collection target of Rs3631 billion during 2016-17. It has collected Rs2520 billion during ten months (July-April) of the current fiscal year. Now an unofficial revised target is set Rs3500 billion for the year 2016-17. Federal government has communicated the provinces to adjust their budgets according to the new tax collection target. An amount of Rs2.135 trillion was to be transferred to the provinces in 2016-17. Punjab was to get Rs1045.01 billion Sindh Rs547.84 billion, KP Rs346.18 billion and Balochistan Rs196.84 billion. With the new target, the provinces are likely to get Rs70 billion less their receipts. Under the 7th NFC Award, the federal government has to transfer 57.5 percent resources to the provinces from federal divisible pool. Under the current award, Punjab gets 51.74pc share, Sindh 24.55pc, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 14.62 percent and Balochistan 9.09pc under the divisible pool.