Tariq Saeed Peshawar
Mixed reaction was offered on the federal budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 by the notables from various walks of life though the majority hailed the budgetary document terming it a balanced one in the given circumstances.
While the provincial leadership of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has termed the Budget 2024-25 as merely a jugglery of words , Senior economists, traders, businessmen, technocrats as well as the bureaucrats have lauded federal budget terming it goal oriented.
A former ambassador of Pakistan in Saudi Arabia ManzoorulHaq while talking to Pakistan Observer termed the budget as balanced one saying increase in salaries and pension of the government employees in the budget would mitigate the sufferings of the salaried people as it would help provide them relief in the wake of increased prices of daily used commodities and inflation that has made the living very difficult.
Manzoor said huge allocations in the budget for development of merged tribal districts would go a long way in the speedy development of the tribal areas and prosperity of the neglected tribal folk. Ex-President Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry YousafSarwar while commenting on the federal budget declared it as business and trade friendly with maximum facilities for all. He however, said in order to achieve sustainable economic growth, we need to curb electricity theft that caused an estimated Rs500 billion loss to the Govt kitty besides making negative effects on the industrial production. He called for having serious thinking about privatization of electricity distribution companies and complete overhauling of the electricity distribution system in order to save this huge amount.
Besides, he said the Independent Power Producers (IPP) needs to be revisited as they have caused colossal losses to the nation.
He said to provide maximum relief to the disadvantaged segments of society, the federal government has increased budgetary allocations for the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) up to Rs. 593 billion, registering a 29 percent increase as compared to the last year which is laudable.
Former Chairman Economics Department, University of Peshawar Dr. Muhammad Naeem, former Chairman Economics Department, University of Peshawar said Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and his finance team deserve credit and appreciation for presenting a goal-oriented budget despite prevailing economic and fiscal challenges. He appreciated the three-pronged strategy announced by the Finance Minister to reform the pension scheme in line with international best practices. Dr. Naeem supported the proposal of launching contributory pension scheme for new recruitment for which the government would deposit its share every month and praised the proposal of pension fund.
Maham Tariq, a senior engineer in the provincial set up highly appreciated the increase in the salaries of the government servants. “Keeping in view the financial crunch and tight economic situation of the country even 10 percent raise in the salaries was acceptable whereas the government has announced 20 percent raise in the salaries of grade 17 and above and we are quite
