Sindh govt to present fiscal budget on May 5

Naimat Khan

KARACHI: The Sindh Government has decided to present fiscal budget for fiscal year 2018-19 on Saturday, May 5, 2018, it emerged on Tuesday.

According to sources the budget will be announced on Saturday next week.

Earlier, in February Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah presiding over a meeting regarding preparation of next budget for financial year 2018-19 had given guidelines to his team to control non-development expenditures, increase allocations in social sector such as education and health and water schemes be given special focus so that they could be completed well in time.

The chief minister was told that during 2016-17 the total provincial receipts, including SRB (GST on Services), Tax excluding GST and non tax were Rs166.033 bn. In 2016-17 the provincial receipts rose Rs159.294 billion in the same heads and during 2017-18 the estimated amount is Rs199.627 and receipts of first seven months is around Rs100 billion.

The meeting was informed that during the current financial year, 2974 schemes, including 2158 on-going and 816 new are in progress against an amount of Rs244 billion , including Rs39.884 million revenue. The provincial government with the personal interest and intervention has released 60 percent of the allocated amount which comes to Rs146.388 billion which is itself a record while the 50 percent of the released amount or Rs72.485 billion has been utilization.

The chief minister said that the pace of most of the development works is better than the last year but it must be monitored so that quality could also be maintained.

The chief minister said that the health department was showing some progress, particularly in the hospitals which have been out-sourced, therefore this policy must be strengthened and more health units may be out-sourced in the next financial year.

Later the Sindh government announced it will pursue a progressive tax policy rather than a regressive one with low tax rate as its cardinal component. Consequently, no new tax was levied in the budget 2017-18, announced on June 5, 2017, maintaining the standard rate at 13 percent, the lowest in any tax domain in the country.

The chief minister said the revenue target of Rs100 billion set for FY 2017-18 poses an enormous challenge. He urged the SRB employees to employ all resources and put in their best efforts to achieve this target without compromising organization’s taxpayer-friendly image, espoused over the years.

Later this month, the Sindh cabinet in order to ‘control’ external debt introduced an External Debt Management Manual which will cost the provincial exchequer Rs555.166 million.

“The budget has been estimated at Rs555.166 million which includes Rs200 million for government grant, Rs355.166 million from SKAA’s own resources.