The Punjab cabinet on Saturday approved a Rs 782.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2012-13 in a meeting headed by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif at his camp office. The amount earmarked for development projects is Rs 246 billion, while there is a proposal to hike salaries of government servants by 20 percent. The amount fixed for social development is Rs 85 billion, while the education and health sectors will get Rs 30 billion and Rs 18 billion, respectively. The government also earmarked Rs 10 billion for overcoming the energy crisis. Other proposed allocations include Rs 67 billion for infrastructure, Rs 10 billion for production, Rs 70 billion for police and Rs 9 billion for services sector. About Rs 20 billion have also been proposed for subsidies on various sectors.
Around Rs 13 billion will go women development and Rs 0.35 billion for minorities, while Rs 4 billion will be allocated for Ramadan bazaars. The cabinet also approved continuation of schemes like Ashiyana, yellow cab and laptop during the financial year 2012-13. Easy loan schemes for women and small farmers have also been proposed in the tax free budget 2012-13. Later, Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman, who holds the additional portfolio of finance minister, presented the budget in the Punjab Assembly session chaired by Speaker Rana Muhamamd Iqbal. Punjab’s revenue for the year 2012-13 has been estimated at Rs 640 billion, while the province would be receiving Rs 710 billion from the federation under the NFC Award. Of the amount‚ Rs 532.8 billion have been allocated for the non-development budget.
Shujaur Rehman said a five percent cut had been proposed in salaries of Punjab cabinet members, while the volume of petrol being provided to them had also been reduced by half. He said the aim of these measures under the Punjab government’s austerity policy was to provide more resources for public welfare projects.
He said power generating projects will be set up along the canal system of the province with financial assistance of Asian Development Bank. “An agreement has been signed with a Chinese Company‚ to setup a 100MW power plant at Kot Addu Project,” he said.
Accusing the federal government of inefficiency, the finance minister claimed that the provincial government met a lot of hurdles in the energy sector and many projects were disrupted because of the federal government.
The Punjab government has also fixed a minimum salary of Rs 9,000.
He said under the green tractor scheme for agricultural youth‚ an amount of Rs 2 billion had been earmarked for provision of 20,000 tractors at subsidized rates.
Meanwhile‚ opposition MPAs protested outside the Punjab Assembly building in Lahore on Saturday afternoon against the provincial government’s bad governance. The protesters included Raja Riaz Ahmad and Shaukat Mehmood Basra.
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