Financial plan: AJK budget ‘increases’ negatively

Contrary to finance minister’s claim of a 34% increase, figures show the budget allocation has fallen by 6%.

MUZAFFARABAD:

The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) finance minister’s claim that the state’s budget has been increased by 34 per cent is proven incorrect the moment one looks at last year’s figures.

The AJK budget for 2010-11 was Rs47.3 billion. In contrast, the budget for 2011-12 is Rs44.55 billion, which is around 6 per cent less.

Moreover, the legislators, who are busy running a heated campaign for the upcoming elections, walked out of the assembly without debating on the budget.

According to the budget, government employees have been given a 34 per cent increase in their salaries and the net deficit has been decreased to Rs5 billion from Rs12.5 billion last year. However, the development sector’s share has also been reduced from Rs11.1 billion last year to Rs8.2 billion. No new taxes have been introduced in the new budget, even though there is a strong need to increase state revenues. According to the proposed budget, all the income will be generated through state resources (Rs13.64 billion), federal taxes (Rs9 billion), taxes collected by Kashmir Council of AJK (Rs6.9 billion), water usage charges from Mangla (0.72 billion) and annual development program fund (8.284 billion).

The decrease in development budget and the lack of debate over the issue indicates that legislators are not concerned with public issues and are instead busy focusing on their campaigns for the upcoming elections, scheduled to take place on June 26.

The house, which spends weeks debating over the budget every year with strong protests and walkouts, did not carry out such demonstrations this year when there was a strong need to challenge the decrease in development expenditure. The budget session ended in only a few hours and all the demands presented were approved without any dispute.

The budget session marked the last budget of Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed’s government. The prime minister met with the cabinet and approved the budget for 2011-12. During his address to the cabinet meeting, he said that his government has presented a “balanced and pro-poor budget during very crucial conditions”.

The cabinet also adopted a number of resolutions in which it condemned human rights violations in Indian Kashmir and demanded the international community to play its role in bringing an end to Kashmiri peoples’ sufferings.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15th, 2011.