ZAHEER ABBASI

ISLAMABAD: Finance Division has stated that not a single supplementary grant was issued during the first quarter of the current fiscal year and powers to issue grants now lie with the federal government and not with the Finance Division.

Senior officials of Finance Division argued in response to a bill seeking constitutional amendment to impose restriction on the federal government to issue supplementary grants without approval of the National Assembly.

As the agenda items were taken up by the Senate Standing Committee on Finance chaired by Farooq H Naek, officials of Finance Division stated, “Our submission is that power lies with federal government and now the Finance Division has no powers to approve supplementary grants unlike past.” The powers rest with the federal government.

Additionally, they added that a procedure to this effect has also been laid down in Public Finance Management Act, which has recently been approved, so there is no need for constitutional amendment.

The chairman also remarked that members need to understand that constitutional amendment is not an easy task and it requires approval by two-third members of the Parliament. The chairman directed the Finance Division to submit a detailed working paper to the committee making a comparison vis-a-vis proposed and existing amendment and deferred the agenda item till next meeting.

Senator Sherry Rehman sought to amend the Article 84 of the Constitution to require the federal government to get approval of the National Assembly before authorizing supplementary and excess grants.

The Ministry of Finance stated that it opposes the bill because it can hamper the smooth functioning of the government. Secondly, repeating the emergency-related Article 232 in Article 84 is not appropriate because the emergency has already been defined in Article 232.

The committee also passed the private member’s bill titled the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019 unanimously while the Maternity and Paternity Bill, 2018 was deferred due to absence of the movers.

On the issue of Balochistan quota, the agenda item was deferred due to absence of Advisor on Finance, and the committee directed the ministry that the advisor must be present in the next meeting to answer queries, since being a policy issue he is the best person that can respond.

The consideration of a public petition submitted by Muhammad Irfan addressed to chairman Senate regarding simplification of the procedure for filing tax returns was deferred. The committee was briefed regarding the Tax Asaan application. It was recommended that the decision on the issue would be taken up in the next meeting and the committee’s decision will be communicated to the petitioner.