LAHORE: The Punjab government will soon nominate a private member from the province for the National Finance Commission (NFC) committee as it has completed its working group task and circulated the document to other stakeholders for their input.

`Once the document is returnedto Punjab by stakeholders, their suggestions will be incorporated in it and will be submitted to the NFC committee,` said Punjab Finance Minister Dr Ayesha Ghaus Pasha on Tuesday.

The minister was talking to reporters at a consultative session on `Budget Transparency through the Citizen Budget` organised by Sub-National Governance (SNG) Programme at a local hotel.She said Sindh had already submitted its assigned task of working group while the federal and KP governments were working on their assignments.

Ms Pasha said the federal government had constituted four working groups which had been assigned different tasksfor theformulation of the 9th NFC Award.

To a question about non-permanent president of the Bank ofPunjab and impression of execution of Chinese investment under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through the provincial bank, she said the Punjab government was following transparency and accountability.

She said like other commercial banks the BoP also participated in the bidding of different projects.

`The $46 billion Chinese investment is not being executed solelythrough the BoP.

She told a questioner that the government was making strategy to bring provincial economic growth from seven to eight per cent annually, saying the province`s current economic growth had crossed 4.5pc which was more than the country`s growth rate of 4.2pc annually.

Earlier speaking at the seminar, Pasha said the government was fully committed to enhancing transparency and access to budgetary information which was evident from the Punjab government`s budget transparency Score of 61/100, currently the highest for any government in Pakistan.

The score was benchmarked through an independent report titled `Government of the Punjab Budget Transparency Report, she added.

Pasha was of the view that the Punjab Citizens` Budget was an example of the government`sefforts to make the budgetary information easily accessible to public. She said the government would also take this initiative further by making it part of the budget rules to ensure its sustainability.

Also the government intended to start publishing the execution report of the citizens` budget, she added.

`In this context the government plans to publish a mid-year execution report in January 2016 which will report on execution of budget 2015-16 up to Dec 31, 2015.

She said all these initiatives were part of a home-grown public financial management strategydeveloped to mobilise maximum resources, building greater capacity in the finance department, enhancing transparency of budget information and improving financial management of the government.

Adviser SNG Punjab Faisal Rasheed gave an overview of the programme`s objectives which included making the budgeting process more evidence based and participatory.

He said with the issuance of a non-technical and simpler version of the annual budget, the Punjab government had shown its commitment to making thebudgeting process more transparent.

Naveed Saleh Siddique from the Punjab Planning and Development department said transparency in the management of public finances was integral to good governance and the Citizens` Budget promoted social accountability by making important budgetary information accessible to the people.

He said among other measures the planning department was minimising block allocations in the budget, adding efforts were also being made to include only approved schemes in the ADP.