PILDAT, with the support of the Australian High commission’s Direct Aid Programme, organized a virtual seminar session on Comparing Evolution of Federalism in Pakistan & Australia with academia of leading universities across Pakistan.
Mr. Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, President PILDAT, presented key takeaways from the background paper written by Mr. Sartaj Aziz, public intellectual, former National Security Advisor and Former Federal Minister for Finance, Foreign Affairs and a Development Economist.
Mr. Sartaj Aziz could not attend the session. In is recommendations, Mr. Sartaj Aziz believes that the call for revisiting 18th Amendment should be discouraged. Instead, capacity of the Provincial governments needs to be enhanced to deal with the devolved subjects of Education and Health.
Duplication of efforts should be avoided between Federal and Provincial Governments in areas such as Health, Agriculture and Population Planning. Role of Federal Government should be increased in social protection, poverty reduction, higher education and health insurance by better utilisation of the CCI.
Federal Government must show leadership by evolving through consensus & approval of CCI a model Local Government law which should also set time limit of holding LG elections and efforts should be made to increase the federal tax revenues to 15% of the GDP.
Speaking on the Evolution of Fiscal Federalism in Australia Dr. Moeen Cheema, Associate Professor at the College of Law, Australian National University (ANU), briefly shared the history of federalism and constitutional formation in Australia.
He said fiscal federalism is key to robust federalism. However, Australia is somewhat anomalous amongst developed democracies as its constitutional system has deeply entrenched federalism but has at the same time evolved a vertical fiscal imbalance that leads to comparatively much greater centralization of power and policymaking in the federal government or Commonwealth of Australia.
Ms. Aasiya Riaz, Joint Director PILDAT welcomed the participants and provided a background for the discussion session in addition to moderating the session.
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