PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday unveiled a budget with an outlay of over Rs 648 billion for the remaining eight months of the ongoing fiscal year 2018-19, showing Rs 30 billion surplus with a development outlay of Rs180 billion.
Delivering the budget speech in the assembly session chaired by KP Speaker Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, Minister for Finance Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra said that the government had not revised the rate of any provincial tax.
He said that the government was making efforts to strengthen taxation recovery system; however, it would not impose any new tax on the people.
He said the current revenue receipts were 7.5 percent above Rs 603 billion of the outgoing fiscal year.
The minister also announced an increase of 10 percent ad-hoc relief in salaries and pensions in addition to 50 percent raise in house rent of the provincial government employees in budget 2018-19.
Giving breakup of the provincial receipts, he said they included Rs 426 billion from the federal government, which included Rs 360 billion under the federal taxes and Rs 233 billion as oil and gas royalty.
Similarly, the province will obtain Rs 65 billion as net hydel profit, including Rs 38 billion net profit arrears.
Jhagra said that the own receipts of the province had been pitched at Rs 23.82 billion from its taxes and Rs 17.439 billion from non-tax sector.
As much as Rs 71 billion were pitched as foreign grant in 2008-19, showing 11 percent increase over the outgoing year. The province would generate Rs 45 billion showing seven percent increase from other receipts to be generated at the province level, the minister said. The province would receive Rs 360 billion from the federal divisible pool in addition to Rs 4.33 billion as one percent of the divisible pool for war on terror.
The budget also envisaged hefty funds for major schemes such the BRT project and Sehat Insaf programme, besides other sectors.
It also proposed Rs 79.55 billion for the provincial development projects, while Rs 29.34 billion were put aside for development schemes financed by the district annual development programme.
The last KP caretaker government had presented Rs 198 billion budget for four months of the current financial year.
Published in Daily Times, October 16th 2018.
