PESHAWAR: Ahead of 11th National Finance Commission (NFC)’s inaugural meeting scheduled for December 4, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has said that it is focusing on financial merger of the merged areas into federal divisible pool.
Earlier on Friday, KP chief minister Muhammad Sohail Afridi in a media interaction in Islamabad told reporters that he intended to attend NFC inaugural meeting.
He said that he was going to attend the meeting as it was a matter of provincial rights and that the Centre should pay Rs3 trillion of liabilities.
On Saturday, KP adviser to chief minister on finance Muzzammil Aslam in a social media post stated the shared a range of items which the province was expecting from the 11th NFC Award.
Province seeks to align Award with ‘ground realities’
He said that the KP was looking towards the financial merger for erstwhile Fata into federal divisible pool. “Currently, merged area gets special grants from federal government. This will pass on the burden on provinces and relief to federal government,” he said.
KP government has been of the view that from 7th NFC to 10th NFC, vertical and horizontal distribution remained intact despite25th Amendment (merger of Fata into KP).
The provincial government has been pushing to align NFC with the change in population, geography and backwardness, as post-merger province’s revised divisible pool share goes up to 19.64 per cent of the total instead of existing 14.62 per cent.
Mr Aslam also said that the 11th iteration of the NFC Award would also hopefully remove the grievances of small provinces, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan.
He said that the province was also looking towards improvement or reconstitution of the horizontals of provincial horizontals (population, revenue, poverty and reverse population density) and adding climate, water resources, population control, own source revenue collection and human development index as new horizontals
In addition to this, he said that province was also hopeful of retaking non-divisible pool resources which the federal government passed on to provinces without any yard stick (such as subsidies). “In that small provinces are getting less as compared to larger provinces,” he said.
Besides, he said that KP was also looking towards complete devolvement of some expenditure borne by federal government to provinces which doesn’t belong to the Centre as well as identifying the new avenues to improve revenue to GDP and essentially tax to GDP ratio.
He said that they were also hopeful of serious discussion on provincial finance commission (PFC) and assessment of its current status.
Mr Aslam said that the province also looked up to restructuring and rationalisation of federal expenditures, which were challenging federal government fiscal management.
“Fiscal indiscipline and gaps identified by recent International Monetary Fund corruption diagnosis report may ensure extra resources for federal government without disturbing the 57.5: 41.5: 1 percent vertical distribution,” he said.
He said that the province also wanted independent audit of population province-wise.
Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2025
