Govt to start RawalpindiRing Road Project: minister

LAHORE: Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Jawan Bakhat Hashim on Wednesday announced that the provincial government would initiate the Rawalpindi Ring Road Project, besides focusing on the East-West corridor infrastructure instead of previously prioritized the North-South corridor infrastructure. Further, the Punjab government was going to announce its five-year growth strategy next month, which would explain the priorities of the PTI government, the minister said addressing a post-budget press conference here at 90 Shahrah-e-Quaid-e-Azam. The minister claimed that the best budget was presented by the PTI-led Punjab government with available resources with Rs 148 billion surplus amount. “The government will spend resources on output-oriented projects and the future Medium Term Budgetary Framework (MTBF) will be evidence-based,” he said. Justifying the drastic reduction in the annual development programme of the province cutting it down by 42 per cent to Rs 238 billion from previous financial year’s Rs 411 billion, Bakhat said the impact of reducing the development budget on the provincial growth and overall economic growth of economy would be calculated in the growth strategy. Besides, an attempt would be made to minimize the impact on provincial and overall economic growth of the country, he added. However, he put the blame on the previous government for a substantial increase of 23 per cent in the non-development budget mainly due to increase in salaries and pensions. Pension funds were never managed and pension payments grew from Rs 17 billion to Rs 208 billion. On tax issues, he said all efforts were made to minimize the brunt of taxes on SMEs, startups and small businesses as quick impact came on them. Against the claim of the PTI to empower the local government system and the budget allocations decreased with increasing inflation, he said the government was working to dissolve the existing local government system and bring a new local government system in which powers would be actually passed to village councils and local people. In that system, local people would be answerable that would enhance the service delivery. Avoiding a question of allocation of resources to the South Punjab, the minister, who belonged to South Punjab, said out of four mother-child hospitals, two would be established in South and two in North Punjab. He said the government owned the whole Punjab and could not ignore any part of the province. So the balance allocation and utilization of resources approach were adopted, he added. Further, he claimed that the utilization of the budget would be improved and this would be witnessed after the completion of the first financial year of the government. Besides, it would be visible to everyone that one third of the development budget would be spent on South Punjab, he claimed.