ISLAMABAD: The session of National Assembly on Tuesday passed the budget for the next fiscal year.
The Lower House of the Parliament will resume its session tomorrow at 11:30am.
Prime Minister Imran Khan as well as former president Asif Ali Zardari and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari are attending today’s session.
The Finance Bill 2021-22 is being discussed clause by clause in the House. A resolution to present the budget for approval was adopted after vote count following an objection from an Opposition member over verbal voting.
Taking the floor, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said the targets set in the budget 2021-22 will be achieved.
He said it is the first budget which has given a roadmap to uplift four million poor households by providing interest free loans to them. He said these households will also be provided with Sehat Insaaf Cards and equipped with technical skills.
The Finance Minister said the core inflation stands at seven percent. He admitted that the prices of food items have increased which is so because the agriculture sector was ignored in the past.
He said we are spending sixty two billion rupees for the uplift of this important sector of economy. He said we are also giving exemptions worth billions of rupees to this sector on fertilizers and pesticides. He pointed out that the provincial governments are also spending on the agriculture sector.
Shaukat Tarin said we have to enhance the tax to GDP ratio to twenty percent to take the country forward on the economic front. He said we do not believe in harassment but action will be taken against willful defaulters.
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senior leader Khurshid Shah on Tuesday said that incumbent government promised to announce a tax free budget but instead it imposed taxes of Rs1200 billion on the populace.
Expressing his views during the NA session, Khurshid Shah said that poverty in the country has risen to historic level. He lambasted government’s agricultural policies and wondered why country’s agricultural output is not increasing despite Pakistan being an agricultural country.
He added that country’s agricultural land is shrinking while population is on the rise and asked government what it has done to address the issue.
The PPP leader said that providing health card will not solve anything. In Sindh, a heart operation which costs about Rs2 million is done free of cost and they are never asked that where did they come from, he added.
