Pakistan's NA to take budget for passage
Jun 26, 2022
Islamabad [Pakistan], June 26 : Pakistan's National Assembly (NA) will take up the budget for the next fiscal year for passage on Thursday.
The bill will be sent to Pakistani President Arif Alvi for his approval on the same day as per the schedule.
Since the Finance Bill would be immediately consigned to the President, it is feared that he would hold the bill if his past practice is kept in view, The News International reported citing sources.
Even without the implementation of the Finance Bill, the budget will be in place of July 1.
The government has made it clear that all the ministries, divisions and relevant departments will start getting their expenditures and sanctioned amounts on July 1.
The Finance Bill will become automatically enforced after ten days of its passage on July 9 in case the Pakistani President doesn't give his assent, The News International quoted citing sources.
The local media reports mention that there could be a delay in starting of collection of taxes and other government revenue resources if the presidential assent for the Finance Bill is not received, however, the impact will only last for less than two weeks.
Alvi's assent to the Finance Bill is very important for his own position in the parliament as he is a member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and any negative decision could be strongly considered an impeachment by the parliament for being under Imran's influence as a political tiff between Shehbaz government and PTI continues to deepen.
Meanwhile, Shehbaz Sharif's government on Friday increased the tax rates for the salaried class to fulfil the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
It had withdrawn the tax relief to the salaried class announced on June 10 and the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR's) collection target was increased to Rs 7,470 billion, reported Geo News.
On Personal Income Tax (PIT), the government raised a tax amount of Rs 80 billion as first, the government abolished tax relief of Rs 47 billion and then raised a tax amount of Rs 35 billion, so the FBR was going to collect Rs 235 billion from salaried class in the next budget against a collection of Rs 200 billion in the outgoing fiscal year.
