KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah will set a rare example on Monday (today) when he will be delivering a second speech of a single fiscal year’s budget to seek approval from the newly elected assembly for the remaining nine months of 2018-19.

Mr Shah’s previous government that ended on May 31 had presented a full year’s budget before the expiry of the previous assembly and obtained authorisation of expenditures for the next three months during the interregnum in place to hold the July 25 general elections.

The previous assembly, with no finance bill on offer by the government, had passed a ‘tax-free’ budget of over Rs1.144 trillion for financial year 2018-19 with a deficit of Rs20.46 billion.

Officials in the government said the total outlay of the yearly budget would remain almost the same. However, there could be certain new schemes with fresh demands for grants as well as piles of cut motions are expected from the opposition.

Barring two, the majority opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s members are debutants in the parliamentary politics, including its nominated opposition leader Firdous Naqvi.

Three members of the Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan and a single lawmaker belonging to the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal are too new to the assembly. However, many familiar faces still represent the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Grand Democratic Alliance.

Sindh Assembly secretary G. M. Umer Farooq told Dawn that seats had been allotted to the opposition and the treasury benches for the budget session scheduled to begin at 10am.

The officials in the government said CM Shah in his speech would seek the assembly’s approval for the remaining nine months of the current fiscal year — Oct1, 2018 to June30, 2019. The officials said the government could present the finance bill at any given time.

Mr Farooq said the session would be deferred for the rest of the week in respect of Muharram and then the members of the assembly would be given five days to engage in the debate on the budget.

A formal announcement for appointment of the leader of the opposition would be made by Speaker Siraj Durrani on Monday.

The PTI, which has most members (28) has nominated Mr Naqvi to lead the opposition.

On Sunday evening, CM Murad Ali Shah presided over a meeting of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party’s parliamentary party at CM House.

Speaker Siraj Durrani, PPP Sindh president Nisar Khuhro, provincial ministers and other members participated in the meeting.

A party spokesperson said the chief minister took the parliamentary party into confidence vis-à-vis the budget.

“We will get authorisation (for the budget) of the assembly for the next nine months,” Mr Shah was quoted as saying.

He said his government would try its level best to complete all ongoing schemes in the current financial year.

The budget, which has originally been presented in May had given priority to improvement in infrastructure development of basic facilities, and social sector, including education, health and law and order.

The total receipts included Rs665.08 billion federal transfers, Rs243.08 billion provincial receipts, Rs75.789 billion capital receipts; Rs61.911 billion others and Rs23.123 billion net public accounts and carried over plus miscellaneous came to Rs1,123.991 billion.

The total expenditures have been estimated at Rs1,144.448 billion, including current revenue expenditures of Rs773.237 billion, current capital expenditures of Rs27.3 billion and development expenditures of Rs343.911 billion. This shows a deficit of Rs20.457 billion.

In his previous speech while winding up the general discussion, Mr Shah had said Sindh was the only province, which had properly presented and got passed the annual budget by duly authorising from the assembly expenditures for the first quarter of the next fiscal.

Before Mr Shah’s speech 70 members took part in general discussion; most of them belonged to the opposition who spoke for around 13 hours.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2018