ISLAMABAD: The inaugural meeting of the 11th National Finance Commission (NFC) will be held here on Thursday (today) to formally begin negotiations on horizontal and vertical distribution of divisible fund resources among the federating units.
Federal Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb will chair the meeting, which will address three agenda items. All four provincial finance ministers and four non-statutory members – Dr Asad Sayeed (Sindh), Mehfooz Ali Khan (Balochistan), Nasir Mehmood Khosa (Punjab) and Dr Musharraf Rasool Cyan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) – are members of the NFC.
The meeting will be attended by the chief ministers of Sindh and KP who hold the finance portfolio. KP CM Sohail Afridi will lead a large delegation that also includes his advisor Muzammil Aslam, besides the non-statutory member and finance secretary.
At the beginning, the meeting will hold general discussions on the “strategy for deliberations on the 11th NFC Award, including the proposed formation of subgroups for deliberations on thematic areas, etc.”
This will be followed by 10-minute presentations from each of the four provincial governments and the federal Ministry of Finance on their respective fiscal positions. The meeting will then set the schedule and timelines for future NFC meetings, which are likely to be held in all federal and provincial capitals until the conclusion of deliberations.
The 11th NFC was constituted on August 22 to award a new award for sharing divisible federal resources between the Center and the provinces. Their first meeting, initially scheduled for August 27, was repeatedly postponed.
The terms of reference, set out in Clause 2 of Article 160, require the 11th NFC to distribute between the federal government and the provinces the net revenues of five main tax categories. These include income taxes, including capital value tax and corporation tax, but excluding income taxes consisting of remuneration paid from the Federal Consolidated Fund.
Published in Amanecer, December 4, 2025.
