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Govt expenditures

being reprioritised,

says Shaukat

ISLAMABAD: The government is reprioritising develoment expenditures in order to maximise returns and to ensure that developmental benefits are passed on to the poorest sections of the community.

This was stated by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in his opening remarks while chairing the meetig of the Award Monitoring Committee of the National Finance Commission held here on Tuesday.

He said austerity in expenditures and poverty alleviation are the main policy objectives of the government.

The government intends also to simplify and reduce multiple taxes for industries since this would reduced harassment to tax payers and would also help generate more revenues, he added.

Shaukat said the fiscal deficit was being controlled with exports picking up and manufacturing, particularly, in the textiles sector, showing buoyancy.

Punjab finance minister briefed the meeting about the proposals under this government's considerations regarding multiplicity of taxes.

He said Punjab government expects ultimately to reduce provincial taxes substantially. As a part of the process the provincial government would be considering devolving tax authority in some areas to the local government authorities.

The meeting discussed the imposition of provincial registration fees and taxes on cellular mobile phones and decided that the issue would be resolved quickly in consultation with the legal authorities at the federal and provincial levels.

CBR chairman, briefed the meeting about the reveue target for the current fiscal year and informed that about Rs. 210 billion have been collected up to February 2000.

He said the total revenue target set for the current fiscal year was Rs. 362 billion and that may be achieved.

The meeting reviewed the status of federal transfers and receipts/expenditures of the provincial governments for the current fiscal and last financial year i.e. 1998-99. The meeting noted with concern that during the last fiscal year (1998-99) the provincial governments had invariably failed to check non-developmental expenditure but the position has improved considerably since October 1999.

The meeting also reviewed the formula for distribtion of federal resources from the divisible pool. The meeting was given a detailed briefing on the month-wise releases made to the provinces on the basis of actual collections.ÑAPP