‘Budget to focus on health, education’

LAHORE: Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Hashim Jawan Bakht said that budget would be made with focus on social sector which revolved around health, education, clean drinking water and green Pakistan in accordance with the priorities set by the PTI government.

Besides, the PTI believed in keeping the stakeholders on board and they were backbone of any policy. He mentioned that the Punjab government was revisiting the health insurance scheme as out of 2 million insurance holders only 40,000 were benefited while the government had paid full premium. Furthermore, number of companies was made but not a single drop of clean drinking water was produced instead concrete net spread in the cities which affected the ground water as well.

The minister was addressing a pre-budget seminar organised by Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) here Thursday. He said that the stakeholders were the backbone of tax policies and without developing their trust we cannot move forward. The government respects the valuable input of the stakeholders in finalising the upcoming finance bill. It aims to reduce the tax burden on the people and make Punjab a self-sufficient province by mobilisation of revenue through progressive economic growth.

The minister went on to say that the government wanted to facilitate the compliant taxpayers by simplifying taxpaying methods by introducing business model where the public does not need to visit government offices and get their rights at their doorsteps, he also said that he wanted to take effective measures to bring the undocumented sector of the economy within the tax net with the help of the stakeholders.

Former finance minister Dr Hafeez Pasha criticised the outgoing PML-N led Punjab government on manoeuvering the budget numbers and hoped that the PTI-led government would not follow this practice. He mentioned that during the last year Rs406 billion were spent from the ADP outlay against the fixed of Rs635 billion. Additionally, he suggested that the PTI-led Punjab government should not exceed its ADP outlay to Rs350 billion.

Dr Hafeez Pasha appreciated the PRA performance stating that it doubled the revenue collection in just four years period while only last financial year growth was 19 percent which was above the FBR revenue growth despite the PRA missed the revenue collection target. On non tax revenue side, he criticised the performance of the Punjab government mentioning that it was reduced to Rs62 billion from Rs71 billion during the five years. He insisted on increasing the Abyana rates in the Punjab for the water preservation.

In his address, PRA Chairperson Javed Ahmed said that during the last financial year PRA had crossed Rs100 billion revenue mark for the first time and collected around Rs110 billion revenue.