The much-hyped Punjab Assembly budget session will be held on June 10, during which the Punjab government will present a “tax-free” budget for the fiscal year 2011-12. According to sources in the provincial assembly, a notification has been issued in this regard, which set the time of the session at 3pm on Friday. Members of the assembly will meet for the presentation of the annual provincial budget for formal approval from the House.
The budget session will continue for almost three weeks, during which legislators would debate and approve the annual budgetary allocations as well as revenue generation strategy. The sources said that the Punjab government had decided to hand the responsibility of presenting the provincial budget to Education Minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman. About the budget, they said the Punjab government had also decided to bring the rich into the tax net, and PML-N Senator Ishaq Dar was monitoring the process of budget preparation because the Punjab government had no finance minister after it expelled the PPP ministers from the provincial cabinet. The sources said no new taxes will be introduced in the budget, but steps would be taken to increase the tax net. They claimed that there was a proposal to levy taxes on the members of swimming pools and elite clubs under consideration. T
he provincial government was also thinking about reintroducing the Yellow Cab Scheme in the province, they said.According to the sources, the Punjab government refused a proposal to increase the property tax, but there were proposals to divide Lahore into various categories for enforcement of the property tax. A proposal was also under consideration to increase the token tax on vehicles above 1,000CC, they said.
