LAHORE, April 14: Punjab has finalised its recommendations for the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC), which will soon be presented to the cabinet.

Punjab Finance Minister Hasnain Bahadur Dareshak said here on Friday while talking to journalists at a seminar on the “Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiative (GRBI).”

These recommendations regarding distribution of resources to districts would go to the cabinet for discussion before moving to the governor for approval and grant of award from the next fiscal year.

About the revised National Finance Commission (NFC) award, he said that would bring more resources to provincial governments.

Earlier, speaking on the occasion at the seminar, Mr Dareshak said the allocation for the social sector would increase next year.

In spite of the resource crunch, he said Punjab had spent Rs93 billion for social services, especially health and e-sectors, and this outlay would hopefully be enhanced to Rs106 billion during the next financial year.

“Our public spending patterns are significantly gender sensitive and government is also focusing on female share in new recruitments,” he said and added: “free education up to metric along with a stipend and scholarships for girl students and provision of facilities in girl schools have been government priority areas during the last three years.”

For institutionalising these gender preferences in the budgetary process, he said the government had taken a lead in incorporating first set of changes in the provincial budget call circular.

He explained that this would lead to availability of essential data for analysis and future planning. For the first time, the finance department would present gender budget statement with the next budget publications, depicting details of government’s gender focused spending.

In his key note address, finance secretary Rao Iftikhar Ahmed said that though government departments, research institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and press were stakeholders in gender responsive budgeting initiative, this workshop would go a long way in sensitising all other segments of society, especially members of provincial and national assembly.

He hoped that such an orientation workshop would bring conceptual clarity among participants and help their struggle for gender cause for a prosperous Pakistan.

Later, GRBI project director Dr Arshad Mahmood briefly introduced aims and objectives of the project.

He said it was aimed at creating awareness and consensus building among the stakeholders, training in gender budgeting, gender analysis of priority sectors and review of the research.

Ms Deborah Jean Budlender, an international consultant on the subject, also gave a presentation on the occasion.

She discussed what GRBI was all about. She claimed that the budget was the most important policy tool for a government, particularly those areas where a lot of opportunities existed for parliamentarians to play their role.

In her concluding remarks, Ms Faiza Effendi, the UNDP gender unit chief, appreciated efforts of the Punjab government towards the gender responsive budgeting and expressed hope that this workshop would prove to be beneficial for participants.