Quetta: Balochistan’s budget for fiscal year 2016-17 with a total outlay of Rs. 289.35 billion was announced in Balochistan Assembly, on Sunday.
Chief Minister (CM) of Balochistan, Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri, who also has the additional charge of Finance Minister, presented the budget while Speaker Assembly Rahila Durrani chaired the assembly session.
Total budgeted expenditure for the next fiscal year is announced to be Rs. 289.35 billion out of which Rs. 184.76 billion is revenue expenditure and 33.41 billion is capital expenditure.
Total development expenditure is budgeted to be 71.18 billion out of which Rs. 6.182 would be financed by Foreign Projected Assistance (FPA). There has been a 37.49 percent increase in development budget which was Rs. 51.77 billion for fiscal year 2015-16.
Public Health Engineering has received the biggest allocation in development budget with 15.27 billion which makes up 21.45 percent. A sum of Rs. 10 billion has been allocated to Quetta Water Supply project which is based on pumping water from Kacchi and Pat Feeder Canals to Quetta City.
This fiscal year, Balochistan government anticipates revenues of Rs. 252.87 billion. Federal Divisible Pool share of Balochistan is Rs. 182.60 billion and province will also get Rs. 10 billion for Gas Development Surcharge Arrears.
Budget for 2016-17 has a deficit of Rs. 36.48 billion and CM did not explain in his speech that how the deficit would be met up.
It was announced by CM in his speech that government has allocated Rs. 30.25 billion for Law and Order, Rs. 17.37 Billion for Health and Rs. 28.29 billion for General Public Services.
A sum of Rs. 42.67 billion has been allocated for non-development expenditure of education in the Budget which is 11.49 percent increase as compared to last year. However, only 6.65 billion have been allocated for development budget of Education as compared to the figure of Rs. 10.19 billion, last year.
“Salaries of the government employees would be increased by 10 percent in the current budget,” declared CM Balochistan. He further added that 3,000 new jobs would be created in the forthcoming year.
CM also announced that minimum acceptable wage in the province would be Rs. 14,000.
Electricity supply was temporarily suspended to Balochistan Assembly during the budget speech of CM but generators were used to restore supply soon.
Budget session was adjourned till Wednesday by Speaker Balochistan Assembly. Debate on Budget will continue from Wednesday till Friday next week.
A verison of this was published in The Nation under an arrangement
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