Centre committed not to ask for further 'sacrifices' after freeze on provinces' development funds: Bilawal

PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Thursday that the federal government had promised that allocations for provinces under the 7th National Finance Commission (NFC) award would be “protected”, and that the Centre would not request any further “help or sacrifice” following the recent decision to freeze development allocations for the provinces. Bilawal joined the budget debate a day after he held a meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is reported to have convinced the head of his coalition partner PPP to attend the budget session in the NA. “The provinces’ NFC award and financial resources have been kept protected; no damage will be caused to them,” Bilawal declared while addressing the NA, which was debating the proposed federal budget for the next fiscal year (FY27). “Besides this decision, the provincial governments will not be required to make any sacrifices,” he added. The government has decided to freeze development allocations for the provinces for three years to generate more than Rs900 billion in additional resources for the Centre’s strategic needs. Referring to this decision, Bilawal said that the Centre and provinces had decided to jointly bear the burden of “extraordinary needs pertaining to defence and national security”. He affirmed that “we came up with such a constitutional and democratic solution which meets the national security needs and also minimises complaints from the provinces”. The PPP chairman emphasised that the decision was not taken unconstitutionally but rather under Article 164 of the Constitution. “The Constitution enables that if the provinces and the federal government have to spend on a subject which does not fall under their domain, under the article, provinces can give grants to the Centre or the Centre can give grants to the provinces,” he explained. He thanked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Deputy PM Ishaq Dar and Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb for remaining engaged with PPP representatives and findin