Govt intends to borrow Rs1.9tr during Jan to July 2020, NA told

ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Zain Qureshi insisted on floor of the National Assembly (NA) on Thursday that post of Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) was not vacant and that Shabbar Zaidi would return to the job as soon as he recovered from sickness.

“Shabbar Zaidi is sick and will re-join his office as soon as he recovered from sickness,” the parliamentary secretary for Finance during the Question Hour in the House said.

The statement of the parliamentary secretary in National Assembly was contrary to remarks of the FBR spokesperson which he made during Tuesday’s meeting of the National Assembly standing committee on finance that the post of FBR chairman was vacant.

The House was also informed that the government intends to borrow Rs1.9 trillion for financing of its fiscal deficit during January to July 2020 which include Rs0.8 trillion as domestic and Rs1.1 trillion as external debt. The House was also told the government intends to pay back Rs12.261 billion as domestic debt and Rs28.2 billion dollars as external debt during the period between financial year 2019-20 to 2022-23.

In response to a supplementary question, the parliamentary secretary did not categorically deny any mini-budget in near future but he said as far as he knew such plan was not in the offing. He agreed with the PML-N parliamentarian Qaisar Ahmed Shaikh that the inflation rate remained over 14% during first weeks of January. However, he said that increase in inflation rate resulted due to logistic problems because of fog leading to increase in demand and supply gap.

Zahra Wadood Fatemi from PML-N on a supplementary question, made an observation that the FBR was being run without the chairman while ongoing fiscal situation, suggests that the government is going to present a mini-budget during the ongoing month. Qaisar Ahmed Shaikh said the mini-budget would be unavoidable as the government was far behind the budgetary targets with the inflation rate touching over 14% as per expectations of 11% while there has also been shortfall in revenue collection and increase fiscal deficit.

The parliamentary secretary for finance, however, said that the government is taking necessary steps to ensure fiscal discipline, stabilise economy and accelerate the growth. He said the process of revamping the economy through structural reforms and stabilising measures such as broadening the tax base, reforming the public sector enterprises and reducing the fiscal deficit has been started. He said social safety net and development spending are not only protected but enhanced considerably.

The parliamentary secretary said the inflation rate is being brought down as a result of series of measures and these included non-borrowing from the State Bank of Pakistan.

In written reply, the House was informed that the total Debt and Liabilities increased by Rs10.33 trillion during financial year 2018-19 which include government debt as well as borrowing of other sectors which is not the liability of the government of Pakistan such as private sector, banks, foreign exchange liabilities etc.

The House was informed that though total debt and liabilities of the country had exceeded the size of GDP at end June 2019, however, it is important to mention that total public debt stood at 84.8 percent of GDP, thus remaining below the level of 100 percent as observed at start of year 2000.

Parliamentary Secretary for Commerce Aliya Hamza Malik told the House that both Pakistan and Iran have conducted negotiations over the establishment of barter trade mechanism and promote cooperation in the fields of customs, agriculture and industry.

She said exports are witnessing growth whilst imports have been reduced. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said a law will be brought under which the Prime Minister will not be able to hold multiple camp offices. He said Prime Minister Imran Khan has discouraged the tendency of holding camp offices.

Minister for Communications Murad Saeed chipped in with information for the opposition that the last PML-N government maintained five camp offices for the prime minister while five private accommodations were declared as the prime minister’s camp offices and three houses as president’s camp offices.

The National Assembly passed a bill further to amend the Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services Act, 2008 [The Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (Amendment) Bill, 2019. Three bills were also introduced including The Criminals Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020 (Insertion of new section 297A); The Islamabad Capital Territory Child Protection (Amendment) Bill, 2020 and the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020 (Insertion of new section 409A.)