GEO BUSINESS NEWS

QUETTA: The “tax-free” Balochistan budget for the next financial year 2009-2010 is scheduled to be presented in the provincial assembly today (Saturday). Provincial Minister for Finance Mir Asim Kurd alias Gailu would present the budget in the assembly.Officials of the provincial financial department said the volume of the next provincial budget would be around Rs 80 billion with an estimated deficit of around Rs 8 billion. The allocations for the development activities in the next fiscal year budget are estimated at around Rs 51 billion with around Rs 21 billion to be made for the non-development activities.The official sources said that an increase of 15 percent in the salaries of civil servants will be made in the budget in accordance with the raise announced by the federal government for the employees in the federal budget for the next year recently.The salaries and raise in the provincial government employees’ wages would cost around Rs 3 billion in the budget as presently there is a total strength of 165,000 employees in the province. The strength of the employees would be increased to 170,000 in the next financial year. Some 4,000 new vacancies would be created in education, health and police departments in the next financial year budget.The sources said that special focus would be on the agriculture, education and health sectors in the next year budget. The federal government has announced to provide Rs 6 billion for the Quetta Package and Peoples programme. Similarly, Rs 3 billion would also be provided for meeting the financial deficit by the federal government, the sources maintained.The sources disclosed that the provincial government achieved the target set for the tax collection for the current financial year making it the only province to do so. Under this head, the province got Rs 3.6 billion.The sources further said that Balochistan did not get Rs 10 billion out of the total Rs 51 billion that had to be received from the Federation. The sources disclosed that the province saved Rs 1.5 billion showing better financial discipline during the current financial year.Moreover, the province was also able to overcome the deficit of over Rs 8 billion in the current financial year budget, which was a great achievement on part of the present provincial government.