Balochistan Assembly passes provincial budget

The Balochistan Assembly on Wednesday passed the provincial budget of Rs. 598. 15 billion for the financial year 2022-23 without any opposition and moving any cut motion on demands for the grant, presided over by the Deputy Speaker Sardar Babar Khan Musakhail.

Provincial Finance Minister Sardar Abdulk Rehman Khetran presented 102 demands for the draft in the house one by one, which started one hour and 45 minutes late of its scheduled time. The 60 demands for the draft of over Rs. 351.22 billion belong to the non-development expenditures while 42 demands for the draft of over Rs. 246.92 billion were for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) of Balochistan for the next fiscal year 2022-23.

The opposition members belonging to BNP-Mengal, JUI-F and PkMAP were present in the house when Sardar Khetran moved the demands for the draft but no opposition member submitted any cut motion on any demands for the draft and the government faced no difficulty in getting the budget for the year 2022-23.

However, the opposition parties members who are coalition partners in the nine party alliance government at centre staged walk out from the assembly on the issue of load shedding and returned back in the house after registering their protest against the long load-shedding in Balochistan. They demanded that the government should take steps for ending load shedding which badly affected Balochistan and other provinces.

Earlier, opposition members also loaded the budget presided by the Mir Abdul Qudoos Bezenjo led coalition government and termed it a balanced document in which what they said ” Funds were allocated for all districts for the equal development and no constituency was ignored in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the next financial year.

The treasury benches also welcomed the PSDP budget and said that it was based on the development of the entire province and maximum development schemes identified by the MPAs in their constituencies were included in the PSDP.

In the development budget which was approved by the house unanimously, the government has made the highest allocated of Rs. 49.69 billion for the communication and works sector to construct a road network in the province while another big amount of Rs. 48.33 billion for the payment of pension.

The provincial government will spend Rs. 63.44 billion on secondary education while Rs. 39.64 billion were allocated for the federal funded projects. Another amount of Rs. 14.91 billion was included in the PSDP for foreign funded projects and the provincial government would spend Rs. 23.99 billion on police and another amount of Rs. 14.9 billion was allocated in the budget for Balochistan Levies force.

The government has also allocated Rs. 18 billion for the capital investment and would also approve Rs. 6.81 billion for internal trading. Rs. 22.87 billion would be spent on Public Health Engineering. The house also approved Rs. 23.54 billion were allocated for spending on the health sector for improving the health facilities.

The government would provide Rs. 18.46 billion for the local government in 2022-23. The Finance Minister Sardar Abdul Rehman Khetran thanked the opposition and treasury benches for approving the budget for 202-23 and assured that attention would be focused on the completion of development schemes in time.