June 20, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 15, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 19: The government told the National Assembly on Thursday it planned to begin budget deliberations in the house in future as early as March rather than June and vowed a pro-poor policy shift after opposition accused it of making a bad start.

Winding up the general debate on the new government’s first budget, minister in charge for finance Naveed Qamar announced some more concessions for agriculture and promised a phased, less hurting withdrawal of subsidies on oil and energy. The minister’s defence of the budget for fiscal 2008-09, which he said had been formulated in “challenging times” preceding and following the Feb 18 election, came after a blistering tirade from an opposition of President Pervez Musharraf’s loyalists seeking to shed the blame of alleged wrongdoings of eight years of the military-led regime.

Responding to demands for a greater say of parliamentarians in budget-making, the minister said that beginning next year, the expenditure part of the budget would be presented before the National Assembly in March for deliberations in different house standing committees before the presentation of the final budget in June.

Ex-minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, parliamentary leader of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (PML), accused the government in its third month of existence of being inept and mismanaging its affairs while blaming all its woes on the previous government that he defended and said “nothing like a government is visible in this government”.

“Pakistan’s biggest crisis today is the crisis of confidence,” he said, asking the government to deliver on its promises such as those made in Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani’s 100-day programme yet to be fulfilled.

Mr Qamar, who stood in for the finance minister in the four-party coalition government led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) after Ishaq Dar of the Pakistan Muslim League-N resigned with eight other party ministers in a row with the PPP, avoided to respond to Mr Hayat’s political attacks and concentrated only on the Rs2.01 trillion budget he unveiled in the house on June 11. But two sharp, but brief retorts came from the treasury benches.

PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah said things would probably not have been so bad if Mr Hayat could make “such a good speech” in June 2007 as a minister of then prime minister Shaukat Aziz.

PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal, who resigned as education minister last month, questioned the justification of attacks on less than three months of the present government by “those who gave he country only deprivation and darkness” but said: “We will heal the wounds; this is our pledge to the people of Pakistan.”

Mr Qamar said more issuance of executive orders to reform the national economy as sarcastically suggested by Mr Hayat, was neither practical nor possible. Instead a package of hard work was needed to keep the ship of the national economy floating.

He said the government would take care the suggested taxation and subsidy measures “do not kill the taxpayers” in all sectors of revenue generation as it had not decided to instantly withdraw subsidy from vital food items. While deciding to import 2.5 million metric tons of wheat to cater to existing domestic shortage, the government would subsidise local farmers by bringing the production cost down through rationalising subsidy on fertilizers, and other items of input necessary to increase crop yields. Fertilisers, pesticides, and others inputs used by farmers would be tax-free while the import of tractors and agricultural implements would also remain duty-free.

The minister said crop loans would be insured against natural calamities and unforeseen setbacks.