Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has urged the federal government to devolve greater fiscal responsibilities to the provinces, insisting that provincial governments – particularly Sindh – could collect more taxes than the Centre’s assigned targets if empowered to do so.
According to media reports, Bilawal made the comments while inaugurating on Friday a newly-constructed technologically advanced OPD block at the NICVD in Karachi.
Addressing the ceremony, he criticised certain federal ministers who, he said, were seeking to reverse the powers and financial autonomy granted to provinces after the 18th Amendment by citing the current economic crisis. These challenges, he stressed, ‘belong to everyone’ and must not be used as a pretext to undermine provincial rights.
He said, if the Centre delegates greater responsibilities to the provinces, they are capable of fulfilling them effectively. “The people of Sindh are patriotic Pakistanis who want to contribute more to the country and have the capacity to do so,” he added.
Referring to the sales tax on services-originally collected by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) before being devolved under the 18th Amendment-Bilawal noted that Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa went on to surpass previous FBR records after the authority shifted to the provinces. The performance, he said, showed provinces ‘can not only collect taxes more efficiently than the federal government but can also help relieve the Centre’s financial burden’.
Reiterating his offer to the federal government, Bilawal said the PPP-led Sindh government was ready to collect additional taxes on behalf of the Centre. He said, if authorised to collect general sales tax and given a target, Sindh would meet it and transfer the full amount to Islamabad.
“If the target is not achieved, Sindh will even contribute from its own share to help reduce the federal government’s financial challenges,” he said, adding that any amount collected beyond the target would be spent on the people of Sindh.
Bilawal said the economic crisis indicated that federal institutions had struggled to meet their responsibilities.
He also praised NICVD for providing free, world-class cardiac care, saying the institution had earned global recognition, noting that critics of the 18th Amendment and provincial financial autonomy often ignored the performance of public-sector institutions such as NICVD, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) and the National Institute of Health (NIH).He said the PPP, in line with its manifesto, continued to deliver modern, free medical facilities to people at their doorsteps. Bilawal added that NICVD had become the world’s largest completely free cardiac treatment network, calling its success the strongest response to those who viewed the 18th Amendment or provincial autonomy as a mistake.