The centre and the four provinces have agreed not to spend their due share of the federal divisible pool to jointly limit country’s consolidated fiscal deficit and meet the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
At a meeting of the National Finance Commission (NFC), led by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, it was informed that for not spending their constitutionally protected shares running into tens of billions of rupees, the federal government would keep on rewarding the provinces out of its federal budget.
The biggest beneficiary of tight spending policy turned out to be Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), led by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf of Imran Khan.
The belated meeting of the NFC was called to review implementation status of the NFC spending in the second half of the previous fiscal year (January-June 2014).
Mr Dar, who is also chairman of the NFC, told the provincial finance ministers and private members that the federal government would honour its commitment given at the forum of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) to financially reward the provinces for presenting cash surplus to national exchequer.
As a consequence, the KP was given the highest reward of Rs1.016bn followed by Rs999.9m to Punjab.
A minor reward of Rs18.021m was announced for the Sindh government while Rs533.725m reward was given to Balochistan.
