LAHORE, June 5: Opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly Qasim Zia termed the budget speech “only a verbosity, filled with jugglery of figures,” as it neither provided relief to the common man nor detailed measures to control poverty or inflation.

Talking to Dawn, he said the entire speech was an exercise in political taunts and accusation rather than explaining serious business of budget making.

He said the speech had only strengthened the import mafia as last year it was importing sugar and selling it on exorbitant price, now it would be doing the same with lintels.

Instead of nipping the mafia, the government had ended up promoting the same. He said it was tantamount to handing over the entire nation to the cartel of import mafia, with no relief in sight.

The government, which caused a record price hike, had not been able to provide any relief to the people. Given the severity of price hike, relief of Rs1,000 hardly made any sense, he said.

Rana Sanaullah Khan, deputy opposition leaders in the Punjab Assembly, described the budget speech as more of a political point-scoring exercise rather than budget details.

He said the government had failed to provide relief on two basic areas — eatables and agriculture inputs. People were expecting reduction in sales tax on eatables, but it had not turned out to be a case.

Similarly, he said, it had provided no relief on tax on agriculture inputs, which had rendered the sector non-viable. Nobody really knew what name should be given to this kind of a docile budget, which skipped basic issues and only detailed different expenditures that the government would make next year, he said.

Jamaat-i-Islami secretary-general Syed Munawar Hassan said that it was an “outlay for the rich” in which the poor had not been offered any relief. A sum of Rs27 billion had gone to the army.

It was a budget sponsored by the IMF and the World Bank. Only democracy could end the menace of unemployment, corruption and poverty. As long as a dictator was sitting in the centre of power, people could not get the relief, he said.