MUZAFFARABAD: The government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday a Rs55.68 billion deficit budget for 2013-14.
Presented by Finance Minister Chaudhry Latif Akbar the budget proposes a Rs10.5bn Annual Development Programme (ADP) and sets aside Rs45.18bn for recurring expenditures.
Revenue receipts have been estimated at Rs37.78bn and a Rs7.4bn gap between the income and expenditures will be met by the federal government.
The minister announced that the AJK government would give a 10 per cent raise in salary and pension to government employees and the minimum pension would be Rs5,000.
Opposition legislators walked out of the house during the budget speech in protest against what their leader Raja Farooq Haider called “negation of repeated official claims that the opposition was being consulted on budget proposals”.
The minister claimed the PPP government had presented a balanced and people-friendly budget with focus on almost all sectors.
He said the government planned to raise Rs14.17bn from internal resources, Rs809 million from charges of use of Mangla Dam water, Rs9.2bn as 80pc share of income tax from the AJK Council and Rs13.6bn share in federal taxes.
He said the ADP had been increased by 10pc, and 62pc of the ADP would go to infrastructure services, 21pc to the productive sector, 16pc to social sector and 1pc to foreign aided projects.
Allocations of Rs237m have been proposed for agriculture and livestock, Rs36m for civil defence, Rs150m for development authorities, Rs879.3m for education, Rs25m for environment, Rs150m for foreign aided projects, Rs350m for forests, fisheries and wildlife, Rs300m for health, Rs5m for information and media development, Rs125m for information technology, Rs195m for industries, Rs850m for local governments, Rs1.24bn for power, Rs690m for physical planning and housing, Rs110m for rehabilitation and resettlement, Rs100m for research and development, Rs31m for social welfare, Rs155m for sports, Rs4.72bn for transport and communications and Rs115m for tourism.
He said the federal Kashmir affairs ministry had allocated Rs3.5bn for development activities in AJK in its own ADP and the federal government had released the first instalment of Rs6bn from a special Rs20bn package for the region under the federal Public Sector Development Programme.
He said the AJK government planned to construct at least four tunnels, two of them costing Rs5bn each, to keep some landslide prone and snow-capped areas connected with the rest of the state.
The minister said AJK had always faced financial crises but the present government had taken some measures as a result of which the region would become self-reliant within 10 years.
He said projects for hydro-electric power generation had been given preference. Projects of 8,824 megawatts capacity have been identified and work on several of them is under way.
The finance minister urged the federal government investment in “these hidden treasures of AJK” to resolve its power crisis “instead of looking towards India or any other country for this purpose”.
By doing so, not only Pakistan’s power needs would be met but surplus energy would be available for export which would make AJK economically self-reliant, he said.
He said a ‘Green Cab Scheme’ would be launched to provide employment opportunities.
On the non-developmental side, Rs15.82bn will go to the education sector, Rs5.41m to electricity, Rs4bn to pensions, Rs3.38bn to police, Rs3.57bn to health, Rs2.5bn to state trading (purchase and transportation of wheat), Rs1.99bn to communications and works, Rs1.79bn to general administration and Rs1.57bn to miscellaneous heads.