Shehbaz govt to present Rs18tn FY25 budget today

Islamabad: The federal government will present the budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 of more than 18,500 billion rupees today (Wednesday), for which the meeting of the National Assembly was called at 4 o'clock.

According to the details, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb will present the budget, before which the budget will be approved in the federal cabinet meeting. In the federal budget, 2100 billion rupees have been reserved for defense and 9700 billion rupees for interest payments on loans. The government has allocated 1500 billion rupees for development projects during the next financial year.

In the budget, 253 billion rupees have been allocated for the energy sector, 827 billion rupees for infrastructure, Rs800 billion for energy sector subsidy, 206 billion rupees for water resources, Rs279 billion for transport and communication. The GDP growth target has been set at 3.6 percent in the budget.

The target of tax collection of Rs12,970 billion has been set for the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) in the next fiscal year. FBR will have to collect additional revenue of 3720 billion rupees. Compared to the current financial year, direct tax will be Rs3452 billion and customs duty will be 267 billion rupees more.

The volume of inland revenue taxes will be Rs11,379 billion, the volume of direct taxes will be Rs5,512 billion, the volume of income tax will be 5,454 billion, an additional target of 1773 billion rupees has been given in the income tax volume. Revenue measures of Rs2500 billion have also been introduced for the first time.

According to the economic survey released before the budget, only 1 percent of the GDP was spent on the health sector in the current financial year, during which the maternal and child mortality rate decreased. The number of registered doctors in the country was 299,113, the number of nurses has increased to 127,855, midwives are 46,110 and lady health workers are 24,022.

The economic survey showed that there is only one doctor available for 807 people in the total population of the country, one dentist is available for 6,702 people. The literacy rate was recorded at 62.8 percent, Balochistan is leading in the number of out-of-school children as 47 percent of children are out of school, 44 percent in Sindh, 32 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 24 percent in Punjab.

On the other hand, a meeting of the parliamentary party of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was held under the chairmanship of former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in which the members of the assembly expressed their concerns regarding the budget and said that the conditions on which they supported Shehbaz government are still yet to be implemented.

Speaking after the meeting, Shazia Marri said that the PPP was not taken into confidence on the budget, does the government want us to protest. We are facing difficulties due to the attitude of the federal government. It is surprising that the government did not follow the agreement.

Talking to the media, PPP leader Syed Khurshid Shah stated that they do not know which and what kind of budget is it. They are also ignored regarding the agreements with International Monetary Fund (IMF) and China. In the past, the opposition was taken into confidence. An ally is not taken into confidence.