LAHORE, June 8: Punjab Finance Minister Hasnain Bahadur Dareshek on Thursday (today) will present before the assembly budget proposals for the financial year 2005-06, indicating a total revenue outlay of around Rs224 billion, up by 24 per cent from the current fiscal’s Rs180.021 billion.

The revenue expenditure for the next fiscal is likely to be in close to Rs154 billion, up by about Rs12 billion from the current year’s Rs141.884 billion.

The development outlay for the next year is going to be around Rs53 billion, up by Rs9.50 billion from the current fiscal year’s Rs43.440 billion.

Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi announced on Tuesday that the province’s spending on development programmes would be upward of Rs80 billion during the next fiscal year. This will include provincial ADP (Rs53 billion), local governments ADP (Rs10 billion), local government’s own programme (Rs4 billion) as well as additional transfers from capital account (Rs13 billion).

Although the budget for the financial year 2005-06 is going to be prepared in medium term budgetary framework (MTBF), the Punjab Assembly will accord approval to the proposals for only one year.

“During the course of discussion on the budget in the assembly for the next year we’ll table before it projections/estimates for the medium term (three years 2006-08),” said a finance department official.

The budget is expected to be tax free. However, the provincial government proposes to revise its tax target for the next fiscal by some 12-15 per cent from the current year’s Rs20.124 billion. The non-tax revenue is projected to grow by at least 11 per cent from the outgoing year’s Rs15.674 billion.

The focus of the development spending is expected to be on the social sector — education, health, etc, and irrigation and other infrastructure building and creation of jobs in the province.

The other areas on which the government plans to focus include access to justice, strengthening of the private sector and the public-private partnership programmes.