Daily Times

LAHORE: Punjab Finance Secretary Hamid Yaqoob Sheikh has said that the performance of utilization of development resources and revenue generation has recorded an increase of 31, and 45 percent respectively during the fiscal year 2015-16 in the Punjab. He said that this is outcome of successful implementation of Public Finance Management (PFM) reforms introduced by the Punjab government under Sub National Governance program.

He was addressing the participants of a one day workshop organized by Sub National Governance Program and Finance Department Punjab on Monday.

The work shop was attended by the senior and junior officers of Finance Department including Special Secretary Usman Chuhdary and Additional Secretary Saifullah Dogar.

Yaqoob said that the PFM reforms was successfully implemented in its first year and more than 80 percent of targeted activities were completed The reforms helped Punjab government increase its indigenous tax revenue by 45 percent an increase of Rs 47 billion, and utilization of development funds by 31 percent during the Fiscal Year (FY2015-16).

Additionally, secretary finance said that the Punjab government approved and notified a formula-based PFC Award under PLGA 2013. The interim PFC Award was implemented with effect from January 01, 2017. The award has resulted in increases of 19 percent for education, 37 percent for health and 164 percent for local councils compared to previous years’ allocations. The award has resulted in provision of transparent and equitable resource transfers for local governments in Punjab.

Similarly, the Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) was supported by Sub-National Governance Programme, identified 25,000 new potential taxpayers from 22 districts in eight divisions of the province. PRA is following up the survey to make use of the findings of the survey.

In this regard around 17,880 notices have been issued to potential taxpayers. The authority has started to receive some additional tax. Although it is little early, initial estimates show that there is a potential of approximately Rs 1.6 billion from the identified taxpayers.

Yaqoob said that Punjab Revenue Authority’s revenue collected was stagnated a couple of years ago. It was

collecting only Rs42.5 billion from sales tax on services in Punjab. In a short period of two years, there has been a massive turn around to the authority. The authority is expected to collect Rs130 billion during the current financial year.

The senior consultants of SNG program Faisal Rasheed and Daood Ahmed enlightened the participants about the key concepts of output based budgeting, Govt Public Policies and Public Finance Management Reforms in Pakistan. They also introduce junior officers with the basic concepts of PFM through different activities.

Published in Daily Times, August 15^th 2017.