ISLAMABAD: The government will on Friday (today) present its second budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 with an estimated outlay of around Rs7.5 trillion.
The National Assembly is already in session where the budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 would be presented.
Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar will present the federal budget in the Assembly at 4PM this afternoon. A copy of the Finance Bill will also be laid in the Senate.
A special session of the federal cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan will also be held to approve the budgetary proposals for the next fiscal year.
This year, the budget had been formulated considering the impact of COVID-19 on the economy to mitigate people’s sufferings and bolstering businesses would be the main focus.
In addition to fiscal management, revenue mobilisation, measures for economic stabilisation and growth, reduction in non-development expenditures, boosting exports besides job creation and people-friendly policies for the socio-economic prosperity of the country would feature in the budget.
It would also focus on social sector development besides introducing reforms for improving governance and boosting private sector for investment.
On the revenue side, no new taxes would be introduced, but the government would introduce measures for bringing improvements in the system of tax collection, broadening the tax base, and facilitation to tax payers, as strong revenue generation will play a crucial role in achieving the targets for economic growth.
The government is likely to set the revenue collection target at Rs5.1 trillion for the fiscal year 2020-21. The budget has been prepared in close coordination between all departments and ministries involved in budget-related events.
Meanwhile, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on Thursday launched Pakistan Economic Survey (2019-20).
The report highlighted that the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic inflicted losses of about Rs3000 billion on the economy and derailed it towards negative growth of 0.38 percent.
The survey revealed that the agriculture growth also declined to 2.67 percent whereas there has been negative growth of 2.64 percent in industrial sector and negative 0.59 percent growth in services sector during the outgoing year.
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