The government drew flak from MPs in Senate on Wednesday for presenting a budget without National Finance Commission (NFC), as one opposition senator said that the budgetary allocations sans NFC was like giving alms to orphans. The opposition lawmakers came down hard on the government for resorting to more indirection taxation to grind the masses instead of broadening the tax net.
Taking part in the budget debate, ANP Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour flayed the government for not announcing the new NFC Award, insisting NFC was the right of provinces, which was being denied to them. "The budget is neither he nor she. It is neither good nor bad. One federal minister hates Pakhtoons so much that he did not include a single project under CPEC for FATA and also did not give a mega project to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," he charged.
He said no allocations were made in the budget for much-needed dams in his province. He claimed electricity production had decreased as compared to the last year. PPPP Senator Osman Saifullah said the budget offered no strategy to boost exports and industrial growth. Referring to the latest Economic Survey, he said that inequality between the rich and the poor has increased further. He disputed the government's claim of 5.3 per cent GDP growth, citing the government's own figures with regards to various sectors.
He noted if there had been GDP as shown, job opportunities would have been created, adding unemployment led to hatred and militancy putting the national security at risk.
The PPPP senator said the government also could not reform the taxation system. He charged power production had witnessed biggest plunge in recent years. PML-N Senator Nuzhat Sadiq praised the budget and said that two biggest challenges were the menace of terrorism and energy crisis, which the government is successfully tackling and great successes have been achieved to crush terrorists. She added that some projects have been completed while work is under way on others to address the issue of energy crisis.
BNP-Mengal Senator Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldeni pointed out that preservation of water is the biggest issue of Balochistan, as each year, 10 million acre feet of land went to sea, which if stopped by building dams, could turn around the life of people there.
He noted that a province, which formed 43 per cent area of Pakistan, was not given a single mega project even under CPEC while people still rely on electricity from Iran.
Senator Muzaffar Hussain Shah of PML-Functional said that there was potential for agriculture growth and proposed some proposals to boost production, which included zeroing duties on import of farm-related machinery and incentives to local tractor manufacturing industry. He also called for slashing interest rate on loans for farmers and continuing with subsidies on fertiliser.
PML-N Senator Nehal Hashmi, who later, tendered resignation, claimed that the new budget was the unique one during the last ten years and it would consume many days, if he threw light on each aspect of it. He claimed the government has a message of peace for business community, as the economy is moving forward.