The day also saw some members both from the PPP and the opposition PML-N come out strongly in support of the farming community against what they saw as urban advocates of agricultural income tax. – File Photo

ISLAMABAD: After days of anger and turmoil, the National Assembly concluded its general debate on Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh's Rs7.7 trillion budget rather calmly on Thursday.

And, largely because of more speakers from the PPP-led ruling coalition in a total of about 29, there were more bouquets than brickbats for Mr Shaikh's budgetary proposals for fiscal 2011-12 on the tenth day of the debate, which he is due to wind up on Friday.

However, from both sides of the house, there was a general endorsement of most of the 66 non-binding recommendations on the budget sent by the Senate, though only the finance minister's speech on Friday would likely indicate how many of them would be accommodated.

The day also saw some members both from the PPP and the opposition PML-N come out strongly in support of the farming community against what they saw as urban advocates of agricultural income tax.

Despite cool tempers, some members from the treasury benches did recall a PML-N noisy rumpus on the budget-presentation day on June 3, when its lawmakers had almost besieged the finance minister during his speech, and their outbursts and walkouts afterwards, but the day passed off without any trouble.

Even the press gallery was quiet after Wednesday's walkout and a sit-in outside the parliament building as a result of a government notification accepting their demand to set up a commission headed by a Supreme Court judge to probe last month's mysterious killing by torture of an Islamabad-based journalist, Saleem Shahzad.

PPP chief whip Khurshid Ahmed Shah told the house that it might take until June 24 to complete disposal of expected opposition cut motions in what is called the second reading of the finance bill before the passage of the budget.

Health Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada of the PML-Q said while this house needed “yakjehati” (unanimity) in the face of prevailing challenges, the nation needed President Asif Ali Zardari's “policy of yakjehati”.Regretting opposition criticism of the president and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, he asked parliament to honour the institutions created by it and praised the government's economic team headed by the finance minister, which he said was trying to make Pakistan stand on its feet for the past two years.

Dr Nafisa Shah, whose speech turned out to be the most eloquent from PPP benches, lambasted unspecified opposition lawmakers who she said even refused to refer to President Zardari by his rank although she said he was the “real president of the people of Pakistan” after the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and called for an end to what she called inter-party and civil-military blame game.

She said it was not only terrorism and suicide bombing but also the acute problems of disease and illiteracy – she called them “emergency of everyday life” – that needed immediate national attention, and that budget deficit would be irrelevant if it meant meeting people's needs.PPP's Ghulam Mustafa Shah, opposing calls for new taxes on agricultural income, said Pakistan no longer had big jagirdars as under the British rule as a result of land reforms introduced in the 1960s by then president Ayub Khan and in the 1970s by then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and asked which other sector could match in paying its workforce as 50 per cent of the agricultural produce paid to haris, or tenants, by landowners.

Saying that while agricultural sector had always bailed out the national economy, farmers would be jailed even for the default of loans worth only Rs40,000, but industrialists could get huge loan write-offs.

Strong support for the agricultural sector also came from PPP's Ms Raheela Baloch, seeking facilities like free electricity in some Indian states, and Mrs Farhat Ali Khan, seeking increase in productivity, and PML-N's Sardar Mansab Ali Khan Dogar, who opposed imposition of GST on agricultural inputs.

ANP's Bushra Gohar wanted the house standing committee on finance to have more say in budget-making and called for a proposed 20th amendment to the Constitution to include “integration” of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in settled areas, possibly in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province.

MQM's Sajid Ahmed called for use of railways in Afghan transit trade to help make it profitable, improving cotton varieties and value-addition, construction of small dams to compensate for shelving the Kalabagh dam project, more attention on technical education, making loss-making corporations efficient and tax concessions for machinery.

Fata parliamentary group leader Munir Khan Orakzai, who opened the debate for the day, called for more government attention for the tribal areas, exploitation of mineral wealth there as well as possible oil and gas reserves and as much compensation for terrorism victims as in other parts of the country.

PPP's Ms Yasmeen Rahman and Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho and PML-N's Ahsan Iqbal commented on the Senate recommendations, largely endorsing them for inclusion in the budget.