Asad Umar, the federal finance minister, presented a supplementary budget requiring a simple majority in the national assembly for its passage, though it contains few revenue measures that would raise the hackles of any powerful pressure group.
The non-filers can now purchase cars and real estate valued at above 5 million rupees, disallowed in the April 2018 budget presented by the previous administration, a reversal Umar justified on the grounds that overseas Pakistanis, legitimately non-filers in this country, had expressed extreme reservations on this measure. A better policy measure would have been to distinguish between the non-filers resident in Pakistan with the source of their income in this country and those who were non-residents and/or sourced their income to economic activity outside the country.
Umar supported the previous administration's higher withholding tax rate on non-filers relative to filers and disappointingly failed to take note of the fact that withholding taxes, currently accounting for over 75 percent of all direct tax collections, is in effect a sales tax as it is levied on products/services and is not a tax on income as erroneously, be it deliberate or not, claimed in all the budget documents of the Dar/Ismail era. Thus an income tax filer would have his tax cut at source and, in addition, would pay tax on other services/products he may procure on which there is a withholding tax. A non-filer would only make the payment on any purchase/service he may acquire and would legally thereby not be pursued by the tax authorities for being a non-filer.
The finance minister raised taxes on those with income above 24 lakh rupees a year though he hastened to add that the increase would be less than what was paid before the April budget 2018-19.
The productive sector would be facilitated, he added. The farm sector through subsidies on urea as well as giving gas to the local manufacturers (subsidies not targeted and as in the past there is a danger that this facility may largely be used by the rich farmers). The export sector would receive relief on 82 tariff lines (mainly on raw material) of around 5 billion rupees. Given the previous administration's over 180 billion rupees export package, which incidentally did not succeed in reducing the trade and current account deficit, this amount appears to be too little to make a difference. Umer did not mention that he would clear the outstanding refunds to the export sector but did state that the gas price would be equalized throughout the country - a policy that would no doubt irk the provinces from where gas is supplied notably Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Umar extolled his concern over the fate of the poor in Pakistan and for this purpose he announced two noteworthy schemes. One the extension of the health safety card to Islamabad and FATA and two building of houses with 4.5 billion rupees earmarked in the current year to build 8247 houses - an activity that would fuel construction activity in the country and generate employment opportunities he argued. He has perhaps not had a look at the construction figures during the PML-Ns third tenure - from a contribution of 230 billion rupees in 2013 to a whopping 320 billion rupees in 2018, an increase of nearly 40 percent. Or, in other words, construction was one of the few booming sectors during the previous administration. Additionally he reduced the petroleum levy to pre-April budget levels to increase disposable income of the poor.
The increase in taxes envisaged are 183 billion rupees with 92 billion rupees from what Umar bafflingly termed as emanating from available technology (which one assumes the PML-N administration was unable to mobilize) while public sector development programme would be slashed from the April budget's 800 billion rupees (unrealistic) to 725 billion rupees out of which 575 billion rupees would be budgeted while the remaining 150 billion rupees (earmarked for Karachi infrastructure development and National Highway Authority) would be generated through an innovative financing scheme that, Umar stated, was too technical for assembly members. He offered to discuss it with those members of the opposition with the capacity to understand it. It maybe recalled that Miftah Ismail also envisaged out of budget self financing of 250 billion rupees by corporations/authorities to much ridicule given the over trillion rupee dependence on the budget by state owned entities.
There is no mention of any decline in current expenditure which begs the question: how is this budget different from those presented in the past.
Umar made much of the foreign borrowing incurred by the PML-N administration, a rise of over 35 billion dollars in just five years, as well as heavy reliance on borrowing from the State Bank of Pakistan yet he was criminally silent on how the Khan administration would proceed in meeting the country's immediate foreign exchange needs. His departure for Saudi Arabia with the Prime Minister has fuelled speculation of requesting either to defer oil payments or to 'gift' Pakistan as in 2014 however in return Saudi Arabia may seek Pakistan's military engagement in fighting a proxy war with Iran in Yemen - a demand that PTI had opposed when in opposition.
The supplementary budget at first glance appears to be the same old policy measures as in April 2018 budget, with respect to taxes and unfortunately with respect to around 95 percent of expenditure.
Comments
Comments are closed.