Shehbaz says PTI govt will raise taxes in mini-budget
June 13, 2020 03:52 PM
PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday warned that the PTI government would introduce a mini-budget and try to raise taxes through the backdoor.
“Mark my words: there will be a mini-budget and this PTI government will try to raise taxes through the backdoor,” he said in a series of tweets in which he highlighted the failures of the federal government reflected in the budget presented a day earlier.
https://twitter.com/CMShehbaz/status/1271716577013125121
The government said it was going to collect 27 percent or Rs1,050 billion more in taxes but did not explain how it would do that, he added. “In a nutshell: This budget has nothing for the poor and the working class & [and] does nothing to revive the economy!”
Shehbaz said the budget 2020-21 offered nothing to revive the economy. “Where is development expenditures to create jobs & [and] cause growth?”
The PTI government should have come up with an increased PSDP (Public Sector Development Programme) funding and innovative schemes to redress increasing unemployment and poverty. “Instead the PSDP budget has decreased from Rs701 billion to Rs650 billion,” he noted.
Describing it as an anti-poor budget, the PML-N president said the social protection budget in the coming year had also been reduced from Rs245 billion to Rs230 billion “even though Covid-19 is likely to be with us for much of next year.”
He said although large-scale manufacturing was down by 7.8 percent, the budget had no plans to revive the manufacturing. “This was a time when a reduction in the sales tax and duties was warranted.”