15th Finance Commission holds first meeting, to seek inputs from all stakeholders

New Delhi, Dec 4 (IANS) The 15th Finance Commission on Monday decided to expeditiously hold wide-ranging consultations with all stakeholders on national, state and grassroot levels to "suitably address" the wide-ranging terms of reference it has been assigned.

It also recognised the need to undertake analytical papers, analysis from leading research organisations and seek academic inputs and interactions with leading think-tanks and domain knowledge experts to come up with its recommendations, said a statement from the Finance Ministry.

The announcement came after the panel, constituted on November 27, held its first meeting at North Block here which was chaired by N.K. Singh and attended by all its members. Before the meeting, Singh and other members called on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his office.

The Finance Ministry statement said the Commission was cognisant that it has been assigned "wide-ranging terms of reference which needed to be suitably addressed".

"Towards this objective, it was felt that wide-ranging consultations with all stake holders including various central ministries, all state governments, local bodies, panchayats and political parties of each state needed to be expeditiously initiated," it added.

The panel has been tasked with deciding the distribution of shareable central tax proceeds among centre, states and local bodies.

Its terms of reference also include proposing measurable performance-based incentives for states on efforts made by them in various fields including expansion and deepening of tax net under GST, achievements in implementation of flagship central schemes and disaster resilient infrastructure, reaching sustainable development goals, and quality of expenditure.

During the meeting, the Commission also approved setting-up of its office at Jawahar Vyapar Bhawan at Janpath here.