The Business Community of Southern Punjab has lauded the Punjab budget and said it would surely improve services in the fields of education, health and other sectors. President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry Fareed Mughis Sheikh and Senior Vice President Atta Shafi Tanvir said that the Punjab government had presented an impressive budget and paid special focus on education, health and agriculture sectors in the budget 2016-17.
Talking to newsmen here on Wednesday, they said that the government had created at least 0.7 million jobs while 70,000 teachers would also be recruited while 300,000 existing teachers would be trained for capacity building. Under infrastructure development sector, the maximum chunk of Rs 79bn has been given to roads, followed by Rs 41bn for irrigation and Rs 17bn for urban development. Under the service sector, Rs 92.273bn has been reserved for transport and mass transit.
Fareed Mughis said that it was a good step to expand the tax-net and facilitate the existing tax payers. He also appreciated the government's "Saaf Pani Scheme" besides eulogising the allocation for Health sector. He said that two million youths would be imparted technical education till 2018 and 450,000 were already getting technical education.