PESHAWAR, June 6: Opposition parties and traders of the NWFP have rejected the federal budget for 2006-07 and termed it a ‘jugglery of words’ and a ‘fraud’ with the poor, saying that they have been ignored in the budget.

Commenting on the budget, Secretary-General of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy Zafar Iqbal Jhagra said that no relief measure had been announced for the poor masses.

He said that it was a deficit budget, which would further increase inflation in the country, as the government did not take any step for controlling inflation.

PPP provincial president Rahimdad Khan criticised the government for ignoring the issue of inflation in the budget, saying that a mini budget would be announced shortly by the government.

He said that the masses had lost confidence over the government and now they would not be further befooled by hollow promises.

He said that the government was deceiving the masses over foreign exchange reserves. He said that the claim of breaking beggar’s bowl was a ‘white lie’, adding that the government had recently taken loans.

He said that 50 per cent of the masses depended on agriculture but the budget envisaged neither measures for the welfare of small-scale farmers nor reforms to increase agricultural production.

The president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ghazanfar Bilour, termed the budget a political speech by the minister of state for finance and said that the budget had disappointed the industrialists.