Finance Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Raja Nisar Ahmed Khan on Thursday presented annual tax-free budget for fiscal year 2007-08 with total outlay of 25.32 billion showing 26 percent increase over the previous financial year.
An amount of Rs 7.80 billion has been allocated for development projects, which is 30 percent more than that of previous financial year. While, an amount of Rs 17.52 billion has been earmarked for non-development expenditures.
The Finance Minister in his budget address here at AJK Legislative Assembly said that Rs 14.52 billion were estimated as income from the state's own resources during the ongoing financial year adding that after review the target was set as Rs 14.96 billion.
However, he said that income from the state resources was estimated as RS 15.23 billion in the FY 2007-08. The budget session of the AJK Legislative Assembly was chaired by Deputy Speaker, Sardar Farooq Ahmed Tahir. During the budget speech, the opposition benches raised slogans against the budget describing it as an anti-poor. Later they boycotted the proceedings of the Assembly claiming that their proposals were not incorporated in the budget.
He said that the royalty income from Mangla Dam was Rs 66.3 million in the current financial year which he said would remain the same during the FY 2007-08. He said that an amount of Rs 2.27 billion was generated from Kashmir Council during the current financial year, which he said would remain at the same level during the next financial year.
The Finance Minister said that Rs 3.317 million income was yielded by federal octroi in the current FY, which is expected to be Rs 4.40 billion during the new financial year. He said that there was Rs 3.158 billion budgetary deficit during the current fiscal year, which would surge to Rs 4.95 billion in the upcoming financial year.