Provincial Finance Minister Dr Ayesha Ghaus Pasha said that the Punjab government paid special attention to the social sectors in the budget for the Fiscal Year 2017-18 in order to accelerate the growth. Therefore, huge allocation of funds was made in the education, health, agriculture sectors and for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
“Our budget allocation reached nearly Rs 2 trillion this year and a record amount of 635 billion was earmarked for the Annual Development Plan (ADP) keeping in view the population of Punjab as over 100 million people live in this province,” she said.
The finance minister gave these views while giving a post-budget briefing on Saturday about the last budget of the current tenure of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) government, in the Punjab Assembly.
She said that it could be seen that the government has made a substantial increase in the health budget as compared to the last year’s budget and a hefty amount of Rs 345 billion and Rs 263 billion have been earmarked for the education and health sector, respectively, she added. “It is a people-friendly budget as special focus has been given to education, health, infrastructure development and law and order. All of these sectors directly impact the life of a common man,” she said.
Speaking on the taxes, the finance minister said that no new taxes have been imposed in the budget but the government will try to improve the process of tax collection through different measures. “The interaction between tax payer and tax collector needs to be decreased and time has come to convert all the procedures of tax collection towards a rigorous IT-based system,” Dr Pasha said.
In an answer to the question that why the government is shifting its responsibility towards private sector by establishing several new authorities and companies, the finance minister said that more job opportunities are created when the private sector takes off and, therefore, people from the private sectors are being included under the public-private partnership programs.
Finance minister further added that South Punjab constitutes 32 percent of the population of the whole province but the government has allocated 35 per cent of the whole budget for South Punjab. A special package of Rs 5 billion will be spent on the development of under-developed regions of the province under the Regional Development Program, she added.
Chairman Planning and Development Jehanzeb Khan said on the occasion that the Punjab government is working on different development projects worth of over 1.2 billion dollars in the collaboration with the World Bank on irrigation, governance, education and health reforms. “We need to work more and more with these institutions as one learns a lot when foreigners come here in Pakistan for these projects and we also become a part of the international economy in that way,” Jehanzeb said.
“It is a wrong notion that the budget is made by the bureaucracy in closed doors as we tried to consult every stakeholder while formulating the budget including politicians, students and business community,” she said.
Spokesperson of Punjab government Malik Ahmed Khan, provincial minister Zaeem Qadri, Chairman Punjab Revenue Authority Raheel Ahmed Siddiqui, Secretary Finance Sheikh Hamid, Additional Secretary Budget Saif ullah Dogar and Special Secretary Finance Usman Chaudhry were also present on the occasion.
