Peshawar: The federal government could not fulfill its promise to provide 100 billion rupees annually for the development of tribal areas under the merger of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The federal government has been able to provide only 87 billion rupees out of 500 billion to the province during 5 years. The Central Government had merged the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (7 Tribal Agencies and FR Areas) into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the 25th Constitutional Amendment, which was also approved by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.
Under the decision of merger of tribal areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, tribal agencies were given the status of districts while FR areas were included in adjacent districts. In this regard, the federal cabinet decided in its meeting on March 2, 2017 that the central government will provide 100 billion rupees to the above-mentioned merged districts on an annual basis so that these areas can develop and come at par with other areas of the country.
As part of the merger decision, the said merged districts were also exempted from taxes for a period of five years ending on June 30 this year, which has now been extended by the central government for one more year.
According to the records of the provincial finance department, the central government has provided only 87 billion rupees to the province during the five years from 2018 to 2023 under the decision to provide 100 billion rupees annually for the merged districts, while the center is responsible for 413 Billions of rupees are due, due to non-payment of the said amount, the provincial government could not start the process of development in these merged districts in full.
It should be noted that the provincial government is also going to request a meeting of the National Finance Commission to demand the issuance of a new NFC award from the center, in which it is being demanded that the population of the merged districts and other issues should be based on their basis after being handed over to the province. But the province’s share in the total national resources should be increased from 14.63 percent to 19.64 percent, which is expected to give the province an additional 213 billion rupees on an annual basis.
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