“Punjab Unveils Rs5.33tr Budget Focused on Infrastructure, Welfare — Salaries, Health, Education Get Boost”
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Health, education get major allocations
• Govt employees’ salaries up by 10pc
• Minimum pay raised to Rs40,000
• 50,000 families to get house loans
• Lahore remains priority for development schemes
• Credible plan to boost tax revenues missing
LAHORE: The PML-N government in Punjab on Monday proposed a Rs5.33 trillion annual budget for the fiscal year 2025-26, focusing primarily on large infrastructure schemes and freebies for the urban middle classes, especially the youth, as well as small industries and farmers to regain the political ground it had lost in its stronghold in the 2024 election.
The budget features a record Rs1.24tr Annual Development Programme (ADP), which is Rs240 billion or 25pc greater than the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), and commits to produce Rs740bn in estimated provincial surplus to meet a key IMF goal to hold down consolidated federal budget deficit.
The Provincial Consolidated Fund also includes a one-time income of Rs160bn under the head of ‘supernumerary resource’ from an undisclosed source. This kind of irregular income is normally used to bridge the budget deficit. In this case, it is speculated to have been added to meet the provincial surplus condition of the IMF programme.
Finance Minister Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman presented the budget in Punjab Assembly.
The budget focuses the social sector with whopping allocations for health, education, infrastructure, local government, public safety and agriculture. Cumulatively, Rs2.61tr has been allocated, including Rs630.5bn, Rs811.8bn and Rs129.8bn for health, education and agriculture, respectively.
The budget, however, does not lay out a credible plan to boost tax revenues, except an incremental increase of 11.4pc to Rs525bn. The budget documents show the government had failed to collect the targeted tax of Rs471bn for the outgoing year as the collection is estimated to face a shortfall of around 10pc due to lower collection of GST on services and immovable urban property tax.
On the other hand, it reveals allocation of a considerable subsidy amounting to Rs165bn in total for various sectors, including Rs10bn, Rs40.8bn, Rs79.5bn and Rs35bn for agriculture, transport, free medicines and Ramazan Package, respectively.
Development plan
The total layout of the budget includes ADP of Rs1.24tr—Rs398bn or 47pc more than the ongoing ADP and Rs240bn more than the PSDP for 2025-26.
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