Budget 2017-18: Much still needs to be done, says finance minister

Stresses that focus remains on health and education

LAHORE: There is still a lot that need to be done, said Minister for Finance Aisha Ghaus Pasha while addressing a post budget briefing on Saturday.

She said the Punjab Government had given priorities to the key sectors that will directly benefit the common man of Punjab. She said both health and education sectors were given key priority as more amounts had been allocated for these compared to previous years.



She declared the FY2017-18 budget as people friendly with a focus on health, education, law and order, public safety, agriculture as well as public transport. She reiterated her speech from the budget session and added no new tax had been imposed.



The minister said the government aimed to increase collection and broaden the tax base.  “We want to tax people who are not paying their due share, Aisha stressed. She said the government was also improving the mechanism of tax collection to obtain optimum output. She added the human interface was being excluded from the equation of tax collection to control leaks in the system.



The PRA chairman said the body had already collected Rs74 billion in the running fiscal year and hoped to boost this amount to achieve the annual target of Rs86.5 billion by June 30. She said the government was far ahead of other revenue agencies such as the Sindh Revenue Board and FBR.

“We hope to have 50,000 registered tax payers in Punjab by the end of this fiscal year,” she said, adding the marker currently stood at 40,000.

The minister said GST on construction services had been subsequently been reduced from 16% to 5% to promote a business climate in the province. The minister said this move was in special respect to business opportunities emerging from CPEC projects. She said registration fees on new farms had also been brought down to zero to promote farming.

She said the Rs197 trillion budget was a historic amount and never witnessed in the history of the province. She said a 10 % increase was proposed in pay and pensions. Aisha continued that teachers were being upgraded to up the standards of education in Punjab.



She termed 2017-18’s allocation as “poor and businessmen friendly and a progressive budget”.  The minister, when asked about job opportunities, said sustainable employment generation cannot be achieved by public-sector hiring.



Aisha stated the government was trying to attract the private sector to play a bigger role in the country’s economics.

She said that government was also addressing security concerns, energy concerns and slow business models to attract private investment into Pakistan. She added this will ultimately create more jobs than the public sector. Talking about a new initiative, she said that government is introducing investment bonds worth Rs25 billion through the State Bank and this was allowed to all the provinces by the National Economic Council in 2016.

Regarding a question about the lack of government focus towards Southern Punjab, Aisha said that more per capita share was given to southern Punjab then the rest of the province, even in this budget. The finance minister said the government has already initiated dozens of projects in Southern Punjab. Also, it has allocated Rs 5 billion for least developed areas of the province. She said at the time all wrong perceptions were corrected.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2017.