Federal Minister for Planning Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has reassured all provinces that they will receive their fair share of resources and that no province will be deprived of its rights by another.

He was addressing a joint press conference with Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah after attending the ‘Uraan Pakistan’ workshop at the Chief Minister House Karachi on Feb 24.

Apparently referring to Mr Shah’s concerns over water shortages in Sindh amidst reports of the Cholistan Canal’s approval, Mr Iqbal added that there was no water available in the system to support new canals. Undeterred, Mr Shah said the provincial government would fight for its water rights through legal and constitutional means rather than protests.

The Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has greenlit water supply to the Cholistan Canal System project, extending irrigated agriculture to the area, according to a recent media report. Secretary of Irsa Jahanzab Khan says the report has issued a water availability certificate to the Punjab government for the Cholistan project.

Provincial representatives grow increasingly frustrated over insufficient funding and the apparent lack of decentralisation efforts

Following the approval, Punjab will construct the Cholistan Canal branching from the Sutlej River at Sulemanki Headworks, according to Irsa sources, providing access to 450,000 acre-feet of water. However, the authority’s Sindh member, Ehsan Leghari, has penned a dissenting note over the approval.

The government plans to construct six canals on the Indus River to irrigate the Cholistan desert. According to federal government sources, the estimated cost of the Cholistan canal system is Rs211 billion, and the project will bring 400,000 acres of land under cultivation.

On the same day the ‘Uraan Pakistan’ workshop was held in Karachi, a seminar on ‘Policy Dialogue on the National Finance Award (NFC) and the Way Forward’ was organised in Islamabad. Meanwhile, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur criticised the federal government for avoiding constitutional responsibility over the delayed NFC award.

As a result of the KP’s merger with former tribal areas in 2018, he claimed that the province’s share in the NFC award should have increased from 14pc to 19.6pc. Though the federal government had pledged an annual allocation of Rs100bn for accelerated development of the merged districts, amounting to Rs600bn in six years, only Rs132bn have been disbursed so far. The province received only Rs66bn annually instead of the committed amount of Rs88bn for operational expenses in these districts.

While agriculture was a provincial subject, Mr Gandapur added, the federal government continued to collect Rs200bn annually from KP from tobacco cess without returning any share to the province.

Similarly, the Sindh government has decided this month to raise the issue of the Rs120bn Workers Welfare Fund, which the Federal Board of Revenue had collected from industrial establishments and provincial entities operating in Sindh that were never transferred to the sub-federation. The amount included contributions from major trans-provincial entities such as Engro, Sui Southern Gas Company and Oil & Gas Development Company Limited.

Centralisation, not based on democracy but rather to control power and resources, disregards institutional rights and responsibilities.

Furthermore, the results of a vote on a bill moved by the opposition, unexpectedly supported by the government-allied lawmakers, were recently withheld by the deputy senate chairman. The motion sought the private sector’s access to bank credit to smaller provinces through immediate consideration of the State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill.

While the government had strongly opposed the bill, arguing that it was a money bill and therefore its own prerogative, the opposition persisted, arguing it had nothing to do with Article 74 of the Constitution.

To quote analysts at Dawn, perhaps a bit frazzled by the debate, the acting Senate chair called for a vote, and the motion got more support than he anticipated. Ideally, he should have announced the result and let chips fall where they may. Instead, his actions, the analysts added, left the impression that the House was siding with the government even against its member’s wishes.

While praising the Sindh government for its full cooperation in national development projects, Mr Iqbal invited the private sector and civil society to join the efforts for economic growth.

For civil society’s participation, it may be pointed out that the government has to provide an enabling environment by forging a federal, democratic and egalitarian order as envisaged by the 1973 Constitution.

“[At] the chief minister’s request, we have included several Sindh projects in the Public Sector Development Programme,” the minister said.

These included the much-delayed Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway project along with the reconstruction of the Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway, which, he added, would start next year.

“In Pakistan, conflict of interest is generally not seen as a conflict or even a milder form of the problem; hence it has permeated our body politic at every level and every sector and organisation,” says analyst Zafar Mirza.

“When people stop feeling guilty about an unethical act”, he argued, “it becomes normalised, and this is the most dangerous situation.”

Referring to unbalanced institutional power as a factor inhabiting the country’s economic growth, Dr Muhammad Babar Chohan, a civil servant with a PhD, suggests that the Five Es Plan, central to the ‘Uraan Pakistan’ objectives, may consider adding a sixth ‘E’— evenness of institutional power.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 3rd, 2025