Federal budget 2024-25 worth over Rs18trillion unveiled
The Federal Budget 2024-25 with a total outlay of 18877 billion rupees has been announced with focus on fiscal consolidation and relief measures for the common man.
Presenting the budgetary proposals in the National Assembly this afternoon [Wednesday], Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said the gross revenue receipts have been estimated at 17815 billion rupees. These include FBR’s revenue collection of 12970 billion rupees and non-tax revenue 4845 billion rupees. The share of provinces in the federal receipts will be 7438 billion rupees.
The Finance Minister said the growth rate is expected to be 3.6 percent during the next fiscal year. Inflation is expected to be 12 percent, budget deficit 6.9 percent of GDP and primary surplus will be one percent of GDP. He said that 9775 billion rupees will be paid for interest payment.
Muhammad Aurangzeb said 1400 billion rupees have been earmarked for the PSDP. An additional one hundred billion rupees have been allocated through public-private partnership. He said the development budget will be at the historic level of 1500 billion rupees. He added that 2122 billion rupees will be provided for defence requirement.
The Finance Minister said that 839 billion rupees have been reserved for the expenditure of civil administration, while 1,014 billion rupees have been set aside for pension expenditure and 1,363 billion rupees have allocated as subsidy on electricity, gas and other sectors.
Muhammad Aurangzeb said grants worth 1,777 billion rupees have been earmarked for Benazir Income Support Programme, AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan, merged districts, Higher Education Commission, Pakistan Railways and IT sector.
The Finance Minister said the major volume of development budget manifests the government’s resolve to develop infrastructure, transportation, energy and IT sectors as well as address the challenges in the management of water resources.
Muhammad Aurangzeb said that completion of ongoing projects will be given priority in the PSDP 2024-25. He pointed out that eighty-one percent resources have been allocated for the ongoing projects and nineteen percent for the new projects.
He said development of basic infrastructure is the basic responsibility of the government and for this purpose it has been proposed to allocate fifty-nine percent of the amount.
For the social sector, it is proposed to spend twenty percent of the development budget.
The Finance Minister said ensuring balanced regional development is a constitutional responsibility. Hence, ten percent resources have been earmarked for AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Tribal districts about eleven point two percent resources have been set aside for other sectors such as IT and telecom, Science and Technology, Governance and production.
