Speakers Stress For Improving Governance To Reform National Finance Commission

Speakers at a conference here Tuesday stressed the need for improving governance to bring about reforms in the National Finance Commission (NFC) for balanced transfer of funds amongst all federating units

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jan, 2019 ) :Speakers at a conference here Tuesday stressed the need for improving governance to bring about reforms in the National Finance Commission (NFC) for balanced transfer of funds amongst all federating units.

Policy research Institute of market economy,PRIME Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank, has organized a national conference on National Finance Commission (NFC) reforms: Institutional, Developmental and Political Outlook.

Purpose of the conference was to highlight constraints and implications of NFC on fiscal federalism. Reputed researchers read their papers on different facets of NFC.

High officials from Federal and provincial finance ministries spoke at the conference and elaborated their governments' NFC stance.

The large conference audience comprises of government officials, academia, think tanks and civil society representatives.

Two sessions of the conference were chaired by Dr Kaiser Bengali, a reputed economist and, President of PRIME Shimail Daud, , respectively.

In his welcoming remarks,Joint Executive Director of PRIME, Zia Banday underlined the importance of furthering fiscal devolution till the municipality level.

Researchers of the project and economists Sohaib Jamali and Dr Nadia Farooq, have presented their research on the deadlock in NFC and its socioeconomic implications.

Dr. Vaqar, Execuative Director, Sustainable Development Institute (SDPI) also spoke on Balochistan perspective of NFC award.

Finance secretary of Balochistan,Noor ul Ameen Mengal described the impact of fiscal autonomy on the economic growth in the province.

He said that devolution has provided provincial government to increase capacity to generate tax resources.

Additional finance secretary of Sindh, Imtiaz Bhatti informed on the progress of provincial revenue generation by Sindh government.

Speakers also highlighted the additional resources and talked about performance evolution and it should be tied with socio-economic outcome.

Federal additional secretary of finance,Sohail Rajput spoke on the challenges faced by federal government in the implementation of NFC award.

Despite the prevailing delay in award of NFC award, the speaker said the democratic governance has delivered in successive NFC award.

It is highlighted that the devolution has decreased poverty reduction.

Managing trustee of PRIME,Ali Salman in his remarks highlighted the support of evidence based research to the government for improving the design of future NFC awards.