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Finance Bill 2024 :

ziaulislam

ziaulislam

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ghazi52 said:
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Free solar to 100-unit consumers

The minister said a Rs9.5 billion Chief Minister Roshan Gharana Programme would provide relief to people in the province affected by exorbitant power bills. In the first phase, he said, the provincial Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) led government was providing free solar systems to those who consume up to 100 electricity units. The government would also pay the installation charges, he added.

Post-budget presser: govt wants to enhance tax-to-GDP ratio to 13% in 3 years, says Aurangzeb

Apni Chat Apna Ghar Scheme

Punjab finance minister said Rs10 billion was allocated for Apni Chat Apna Ghar Scheme to help families have their own house.

Kissan Dost Package

The minister announced that the provincial government was introducing a Kissan Dost Package that he claimed was “the biggest in the country’s history”. The package includes interest-free loans of Rs75 billion in total to 500,000 farmers in the province.



Source: Punjab’s finance ministry

Source: Punjab’s finance ministry


Agri tube-well solarisation

In his speech, Mujtaba Shuja-ur-Rehman said the provincial government would spend Rs9 billion on solarisation of 7,000 tube-wells in the province.

Green Tractor Programme

The minister said Rs30 billion had been allocated for Chief Minister Green Tractor Programme through which farmers in the province would be able to get interest-free loans with easy installments to buy tractors.



Source: Punjab’s finance ministry
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Again makes no sense
Instead why not simply make net metering very very easy..remove restrictions and let other people provide for the solar cost
Oh wait ... commissions
 
ghazi52

ghazi52

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Rearranging the deck chairs​

Sakib Sherani
June 22, 2024

PAKISTAN’S public finances are in a Ponzi game, and have been so for several years. No metric captures this fact more starkly than interest payments on public debt as a percentage of net federal revenue. For FY24, this figure provisionally stood at 122 per cent — ie the federal government used up all its retained revenue after transfer to the provinces, and still had to borrow an additional amount to make interest payments.

The fiscal pressure has been mounting over many years without serious attention or corrective action. Ten years ago, for fiscal year 2014-15, interest payments on public debt were 62pc of net federal revenue, an elevated but still barely manageable figure. But it was increasingly clear that the pressure was only set to increase further. With the trajectory of capacity payments to IPPs and public sector pension liabilities rising inexorably well into the future, in addition to mounting losses of state-owned enterprises, it was transparent that the fiscal framework was completely unsustainable without major surgery.

Yet, despite the warning signs, successive governments have dilly-dallied on structural reform and continued to borrow to finance their unchecked spending spree. Key political constituents such as traders continue to remain untouched, while the federal government’s bloated employee-related expenses continue to soar.

The federal government’s employee-related expenses (salaries, allowances and pensions) have increased from Rs752 billion to Rs2.4 trillion over the past 10 years. Including the expenditure incurred on this head by provincial governments, and excluding state-owned enterprises, government employee-related expenses have ballooned over this period to 4.3pc of GDP. With a compound annual growth rate of 13.7pc, this pension liability is set to double in 5.3 years.

It is unclear if policymakers truly grasp the nature and scale of the fiscal challenge.
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On top of this, the two successive PDM governments since 2022 have loaded their budgets with political bribes via freebies for parliamentarians, the military, members of the judiciary, the bureaucracy — and even ‘working journalists’. The unconscionable budgeting has been extended to pork-barrel projects in the PSDP and provincial ADPs. Similarly, the allocation for ‘loans’ to government servants has doubled to Rs40bn for FY25.

Provincial budgeting, especially in the case of Punjab, is even more unconscionable where the budget records 70 projects totalling Rs968bn under the head of ‘Chief Minister’s Initiatives’. The finance minister’s pre-budget talk about sacrificing ‘holy cows’ appears to have been empty rhetoric.

The overall macro context makes clear Pakistan’s fiscal challenges well into the medium term, and the contours of the required policy response. And against the gargantuan task at hand, this government’s underwhelming and anaemic response via the federal budget for FY25 can be evaluated.

To restore a semblance of fiscal order, Pakistan needs to make a fiscal adjustment of around 4 to 5pc of GDP. This is not just to change the direction of the public debt dynamic, but to cater for the ballooning pension liability and making minimal allocations for meeting the SDGs. Even with this substantial adjustment, however, the country will not be building buffers against the effects of climate change or fully catering to the needs of a rapidly growing, and urbanising, population.

As important as the quantum of the fiscal adjustment is the question of how it is achieved. That is, the ‘quality’ of adjustment: which new non-paying or undertaxed sectors are brought into the tax net, how the fiscal effort of the provinces is improved, and to what extent have non-productive expenditures and political ‘pork-barrel’ projects been slashed. In short, who bears the burden of adjustment.

On each of these tests, the federal budget falls woefully short. While it aims for an overall fiscal adjustment of around 1.5pc of GDP, by far the largest in Pakistan’s history, it does so on heroic assumptions, especially on the revenue side.

FBR tax collection is projected to increase over 24pc in real terms, against a real growth of 5pc in FY24. In terms of tax buoyancy, the budget aims for an unprecedented increase in FBR tax collection of 2.5 times over projected nominal GDP growth, against an increase of 1.2 times recorded in FY24.

New tax measures equalling 1.8pc of GDP, mostly coming from existing taxpayers, are expected to propel the targeted increase in tax revenue. Similarly, an abnormal increase in non-tax revenue and an outsized provincial surplus provides a prop for the fiscal façade.

One ‘windfall’ the federal budget is very likely to reap is on debt servicing costs. With inflation likely to resume its sharp fall after a few months of reversing course due to the inflationary impact of the budgetary measures, the government’s interest payments could very likely be significantly lower than budgeted (assuming the volume of borrowing remains constant).
 
ghazi52

ghazi52

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Senate panel finalises proposals for changes in finance bill​

Sohail Sarfraz | Zaheer Abbasi
June 23, 2024

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, Saturday, finalised a set of recommendations for major changes in Finance Bill 2024 to encourage documentation and facilitate the general public.

The committee proposed that transactions exceeding Rs50,000, excluding utility bill payments, must be made via a crossed cheque, bank draft, pay order, or other crossed banking instrument, transferring the sales tax invoice amount from the buyer’s business bank account to the supplier.

The committee also revised the amendment related to the liability for tax payments or erroneous refunds, incorporating a default surcharge at the rate of KIBOR plus three percent per annum, whichever is higher.

Concluding a rigorous nine-day session on deliberations over the Money Bill 2024, the committee issued recommendations aimed at benefiting the general public. Key recommendations included mandating credit/ debit card transactions for purchases exceeding Rs30,000 to promote economic documentation, imposing uniform sales tax rates on solar industry components, withdrawing taxes on eight specified stationary items under the Finance Bill 2024, and requiring price labels on all consumer goods for informed purchasing decisions.

Additionally, recommendations were made to identify organisations exploiting tax exemptions under the guise of charitable status, provide additional allowances equal to 100 per cent of basic pay for disabled individuals (comprising less than two per cent of the workforce), and distinguish remote workers from freelancers for tax purposes.
 
ghazi52

ghazi52

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Mar 21, 2007
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‘All’s well’ after PPP, PML-N settle differences​

Syed Irfan Raza

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari calls on PM Shehbaz Sharif on June 20 in Islamabad. — PID

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari calls on PM Shehbaz Sharif on June 20 in Islamabad. —

• Bilawal assures PML-N of support with budget; both sides likely to meet today for further negotiations
• PM told Punjab govt ‘creating difficulties’ for PPP; Tarar says ally’s reservations to be addressed via dialogue
 
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