‘Centre may squeeze provinces, taxpayers’

Kaiser Bengali stresses need for ensuring food security amid pandemic

KARACHI: Eminent economist Dr Kaiser Bengali has expressed fear that the federal government may further squeeze financial resources of provinces by reducing their share in the divisible pool and it may empty pockets of individual taxpayers by imposing heavy taxes in the upcoming budget.

Speaking at a webinar on the budget for 2020-21 and the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, Bengali said, “the federal government may go to the extreme level.”

He pointed out that the federal government had already asked the four provinces to contribute their share in six additional areas which included the development budget of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, coping with natural calamities, allocation to meet security expenditures, supporting loss-making enterprises, subsidy mechanism and debt repayment.

He stressed that in the agenda of the 10th NFC Award meeting, the government had indicated a reduction in the share of provinces, whereas according to the constitution, the share of provinces could not be slashed.

Bengali said due to the coronavirus pandemic, economies of the world had suffered a lot and Pakistan was no exception. “To survive during the pandemic, we have to ensure food security,” he emphasised, adding that the government should indicate how more food products could be produced including wheat and pulses to save human lives.

“We have to focus on import substitution in agriculture to save foreign exchange,” he added.

The economist asked the government to ensure that wheat, pulses, vegetable oil seeds and other food crops were grown over extended areas and for that it should allocate a certain portion of land for plantations.

He said locust attack on agricultural crops posed a threat to the overall economy and serious efforts were needed to control the insect.

Earlier, in his opening remarks, PILER Executive Director Karamat Ali said Covid-19 had affected the working class a lot. “Many industries have laid off thousands of workers due to lockdown and unemployment has increased a lot in the country. An unemployment allowance should be made part of the existing social security scheme,” he added.

Other speakers underlined the need for initiating pro-poor schemes in the forthcoming budget.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2020.

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