LAHORE: Punjab’s Rs1.452 trillion budget for the next financial year proposes to create half a million jobs in the province through a massive development investment of Rs550 billion in large infrastructure, transport, irrigation, agriculture, water supply and energy projects, as well as heavily subsidise smallholders and landless cultivators.
The ambitious development programme will be financed by a revenue surplus of over Rs435bn and a soft foreign debt amounting to Rs115bn, including a Chinese loan of Rs85bn for the controversial Lahore Orange Line Metro Train project.
About 86pc of this amount constitutes the core provincial annual development programme (ADP) and the rest is qualified as ‘other development initiatives’.
The proposed development investment for the financial year 2016-17 is 37.5pc bigger than the original estimates of Rs400bn, including core development spending of Rs333bn, for the outgoing fiscal, provincial finance minister Ayesha Ghaus-Pasha said while presenting the budget on Monday amidst continuous heckling by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led opposition. The Shahbaz Sharif government expects to utilise three quarters of the development funds by the close of the outgoing year.
The current expenditure of the government has been pitched at Rs850bn, up by 12.88pc from original estimates of Rs753bn for the outgoing year. A little more than half of the current budget has been set aside for general public services, including transfer of Rs274bn to the local governments, 15.60pc for police, courts and public safety affairs, 14.41pc for agriculture, irrigation, industries, etc, 8.3pc for health and 7.5pc for education.
The current expenditure also includes allocations of Rs63bn for providing subsidies to the poorer segments of population, including smallholders and landless growers in the province, the minister told Dawn after the budget speech. The major chunk of the subsidies is set aside for supplying cheap fertilisers to farmers under the federal Kisan Package and providing interest-free credit of Rs30bn to the growers.
The rest of the money will be spent to share the cost of public transport travel and provision of interest-free loans to youths. Other major current expenditure includes foreign debt repayment of Rs16.55bn and allocation of Rs10bn for capitalisation of the Punjab Pension Fund.
More than 70pc of the provincial income, or Rs1.04trn, is estimated to come as federal transfers under the National Finance Commission award. Almost one-fifth of the income, Rs280bn, will be raised from provincial taxes and non-tax resources, and the rest 10pc, or Rs147bn, through foreign loans.