Peshawar: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly announced a surplus budget of $1754 billion for the financial year 2024-25.
The budget session started two hours late with Speaker Babar Saleem Swati.
Finance Minister Aftab Alam presented the budget in front of KP CM Ali Amin Gandapur.
Starting his speech, FM explained that the public has given a clear mandate to PTI in the scheduled elections.
Looking at the policies implemented by PTI, he said that PTI has fulfilled its promise to provide fair and affordable health facilities to the people, increase the number of schools, colleges and universities and introduce various programs to improve the quality of education.
The FM said the PTI project put the economy on the path of growth.
Since providing affordable and quality health facilities to the people is the primary duty of the government, a lot of attention has been given to this issue.
“According to the NFC award, the counties’ combined annual share is $262 billion less than the province’s fair share each year,” he said.
Alam said the fixed rate of sales tax has been proposed for the marriage hall, while there are big concessions in property tax.
He said that the property tax on the factory is $2.50 per square foot and proposed raising the property tax on the canal from $10,000 to $10,600.
“Tobacco revenue goes to the federal government rather than the states, which have the ultimate right after the 18th amendment.”
According to the budget document, the budget of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a surplus of $ 100 billion as the total budget is more than 1600 billion rupees and more than 600 billion rupees has been allocated for salaries in the budget.
Along with the Centre’s share, the KP government is expected to receive $1.212 billion from the federal government, which includes part of the erstwhile FATA region.
According to the document, the province collects about $93 billion from its own resources, with a tax target of $63 billion.
The county’s combined share is estimated at $72 billion, and an additional $55 billion is expected to come from the federal government in grants.
According to the document, $34 billion is proposed for healthcare cards and $26 billion for grain subsidies.
$9 billion has been proposed to provide free textbooks to students and $3 billion to subsidize BRT.
Meanwhile, $2.5 billion has been proposed for relief measures, $12 billion for Ehsaas Rozgar, $3 billion for youth programs, talent programs and Ehsaas Apna programs to build 5,000 houses.
