NA passes federal budget 2013-14

The National Assembly Thursday passed “The Finance Bill‚ 2013” giving legal effect to the budgetary proposals for the next fiscal year.

Finance Minister proposed amendments for incorporation in the Finance Bill including the one relating to collection and Levy of Sales Tax and Excise Duty as well as Income tax slabs. Amendments in the salaries act of the members were also accepted.

The House rejected the amendments proposed by the opposition members.

The total outlay of the federal budget for next financial is 3591 billion rupees‚ which the Finance Minister says is focused on improving economy and provide incentives to the investors to trigger economic activity.

The budget has been designed to ensure a progressive way to revive and strengthen the economy‚ bringing stability in all fields. It envisages stress for creating new employment opportunities and development of infrastructure to give a boost to economic activities.

The government has decided to retire over five hundred billion rupees circular debt within sixty days which will help reduce power load shedding.

It also includes several relief measures for common man including ten percent in Salaries of government employees and ten percent increase for pensioners. Minimum wage has been increased to 10‚000 rupees per month. Recipients of Income Support program will now get twelve hundred rupees per month.

Steps have also been taken to facilitate youth for self employment and a number of schemes including laptop scheme at the federal level has been introduced.

A housing scheme has also been announced in the budget to provide shelter to the shelter less all over the country.

Various measures have been announced in the budget to bring down fiscal deficit.

Responding to the points raised by the opposition members on the budget‚ Finance Minister Ishaq Dar categorically stated that Pakistan will not take loans from the IMF on any conditions.

The Minister said the IMF has been told that no new taxes will be imposed to achieve the tax collection targets. “Even if the IMF did not give us loan‚ we will not impose new taxes but efforts will be made to achieve the collection target.”

Ishaq Dar said that tax to GDP ratio needs to be enhanced to stabilize the economy.

The Minister said the government has not presented any mini budget but included reasonable recommendations of the members including ten percent increase to the government employees in the Finance Bill.

On the GST‚ Ishaq Dar said we have restricted ourselves to the judgement of the Supreme Court. He clarified that the GST collected from 13 June to 21 June will remain with the national exchequer as per the orders of the apex court. He also clarified that no tax has been imposed on Hajjis but on the income of tour operators.

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Posted by Tahir Khan on Jun 27 2013. Filed under Latest News, National, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.