Opposition leader in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz Sharif on Monday expressed his apprehension that many mini budgets are expected in near future. He said this while opening the budget speech in Punjab Assembly. He said 14-page budget short speech of finance minister clearly shows that the government is not fully prepared to address the issues of people. Hamza said the government had reduced the development budget from Rs 650 billion to 350 billion.
He claimed that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government had promised to provide 10 million jobs but during the 10 months more than one million people lost their jobs. He said more than 1.2 million people in Punjab are unemployed out of which 800,000 are women. He said despite depreciation of Pak rupee there is no increase in exports. He claimed that ratio of large scale manufacturing is two minus two percent. The government had reduced education budget from Rs 62 billion to 42 billion. "The government has allocated Rs 41 billion for agriculture which is less than 2 % of the budget. The PML-N government agriculture budget was Rs 78 billion. The government had withdrawn the subsidy from pesticides as a result of which the production of cotton reduced by 12.7 % and production of rice reduced by 19.4 %."
Hamza Shahbaz claimed that the government had reduced the budget of South Punjab by 50 percent. He said the PML-N government had allocated Rs 1238 billion for South Punjab but the present government claimed that it will make South Punjab a province but allocated only Rs 122 billion for South Punjab. He criticized the government for abolishing the local government system with the stroke of a pen.
He said both the federal and provincial governments had imposed the IMF made budget on the people of Pakistan.
While responding to the speech of opposition leader, Law Minister Raja Basharat said that people of Pakistan and Punjab are facing difficulties due to plundering of the PML-N government. He suggested that the commission should be made in the province to probe corruption of last 10 years on the pattern of the commission announced by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
He said cheques of Rs 56 billion were bounced during the PML-N government. He said members of PML-N had not cleared the bills of Punjab House of Rs 50 crore.
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