ISLAMABAD– Minister for Industries Hammad Azhar of PTI government presented on Friday the federal budget for the fiscal year 2020 -21 with total outlay of Rs7.13 trillion and no new tax.
Among the major figures he revealed on the floor of the National Assembly, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) revenue target was kept at Rs4.95 trillion for next year while defence allocations amounted to around Rs1.3 trillion. The federal development programme was budgeted at Rs650 billion to support growth prospects.
Prime Minister Imran Khan also attended the session. Azhar started the session by saying it was an honour for him to be presenting the second budget of the PTI government under the leadership of PM Imran.
He then went on to highlight some of the major achievements of the government in the outgoing fiscal year, pointing to a 73 per cent decline in the current account deficit, which is now under $3 billion, he said. “There is also a primary surplus which we achieved in the past nine months,” he said.
Azhar said “our budget deficit shrank from 5pc to 3.8pc while IMF gave us an extended facility of Rs6 billion and remittances increased from Rs16b to Rs17b”. He noted that Bloomberg had called PSX the top performing market in Dec 2019.
Presenting details of the new budget, the minister emphasised that “no new tax was introduced in this budget”. He said the need of the hour was an expansionary fiscal policy which the government was implementing.