HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh chapter president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government has deducted Rs2 trillion from Sindh’s share in the federal budget 2020-21, which would drastically affect the development sector.

He sarcastically said Prime Minister Imran Khan should have visited Sindh earlier at least for witnessing the “poor performance of Sindh government”.

Speaking at a press conference at the residence of district PPP president Sagheer Qureshi on Tuesday, he said the federal government presented a deficit budget of multi-trillion rupees in which provincial shares were cut. The budget showed failure of the federal government which reduced development portfolio of up to Rs800 billion in its first year and now it was up to Rs560bn.

He said the Sindh government had allocated Rs200bn for development programmes in the 2019-20 budget, but due to the cut in its share in the federal budget, the provincial government would certainly reduce the size of its development portfolio. He said that it was the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) that collected all kinds of taxes and the prime minister had boasted about that very FBR initially.

He said the PM had claimed that he would make sure that the FBR collected Rs7,000bn of taxes, which had unnerved the FBR management. He said the federal government even announced a tax amnesty scheme to restore confidence among taxpayers, but the final report of the amnesty scheme indicated only eight per cent increase in revenue collection, which meant that the scheme met with failure.

He said the federal government might attribute low revenue collection to the coronavirus situation, but fact of the matter was that till February, no such situation had existed. The coronavirus issue affected the country in March, whereas income tax returns continued to be submitted to date, he said.

He said that no final date was fixed for tax returns’ submission yet. It also showed that people had lost confidence in the tax system and FBR.

The PPP leader said that when development sector allocations were cut, it affected economy and employment and added that the government should also control its non-development expenditures. When the Sindh government was claiming that the coronavirus situation was not under control and strongly opposed relaxations in the lockdown, the PTI government made it an issue of its ego.

He said that now the lockdown was being enforced in 20 cities of the country. He said that egoistic policies could not help run governments, adding that the Sindh government repeatedly said that consensus decisions should be taken regarding lockdown measures, but all such calls had fallen on deaf ears.

On one hand the government claimed that it did not have money to feed people because of the lockdown while on the other reports continued to pour in about international assistance to Pakistan, he said.

Mr Khuhro said the government must disclose figures of foreign assistance for stemming the spread of the coronavirus. He asked the federal government to take responsibility for the deaths caused by wrong decisions in the coronavirus situation.

He said the federal government was concerned about its ego more than people’s miseries.

He said Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah never declined to receive the premier, but he could not do anything if he was not intimated about PM’s arrival in the province.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2020