LAHORE, June 14: Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi said on Wednesday Punjab had the honour of presenting a record budget of Rs274 billion and no past government was able to allocate such resources for the uplift and prosperity of the people.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Punjab cabinet at his secretariat. The meeting approved presentation of the budget 2006-07 in the provincial assembly.

The chief minister said the government had displayed high-standard performance through the highest ratio of utilisation of development funds during 2005-06. It was his earnest desire that the same pace of implementation of development schemes should continue.

He said the purpose of allocation of extraordinary amount of funds for education, communication, water supply and other sectors was to improve the ordinary people’s standard of living.

He said the Punjab budget was an important document with regard to achievement of the targets of his vision-2020 and if the same pace of development of various sectors was maintained as had been set by the PML government, the province would achieve its objectives of progress in education, health, and agriculture sectors much before the stipulated period.

Chief Secretary Salman Siddique presented budgetary proposals before the cabinet for approval. He said the aim of the new budget was to transform Punjab into a prosperous, educated and progressive province.

He said special attention had been paid in the proposed budget for the development of economic structure, as increased economic activity would result in provision of abundant financial resources for the province.

Planning and Development chairman Suleman Ghani gave details of the Rs100 billion annual development programme. He said this programme from 2006 to 2009 had been prepared in the perspective of medium-term development framework. Therefore, estimated required funds of the next two years for development purposes had also been identified.

He said besides details of development schemes under the ADP, their positive impact on the life of people had also been elaborated.