Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: A supplementary budget of Rs 8 billion has been approved by the government in order to meet the additional needs of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and civilian armed forces in wake of tensions with India.

According to officials of the Finance Ministry, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet approved the additional budget.

The Rs8 billion budget is said to be for various purposes where nearly half of it would go to the PAF. Pakistan Rangers and civil armed forces will get the remaining budget, also to be shared with banks for marketing Pakistan Banao Certificates (PBC).

The ECC approved to give 0.75% or at least Rs180 million of the total investment in the PBC –whichever is higher, to a consortium of banks that would market these certificates.

Finance Minister and ECC chairman, Asad Umar also directed the Ministry of Interior to analyse the defence needs of the armed forces and inform the government so that it may make required allocations.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has earlier set up a committee which is now required by the ECC to give its report on the needs of the armed forces. This comes after the federal cabinet had authorised the ECC to first clear all the supplementary grants before these are presented to the federal cabinet for approval. Earlier, Umar had returned the powers to issue supplementary budgets to the federal cabinet, which according to the government were grossly misused during the previous government.

Using the supplementary budget approved by the ECC, the capacity of the civil armed forces will be enhanced for the management of the western borders. Additional wings of Frontier Corps Balochistan have also been put in place by the government in order to enhance the capacity of civil armed forces.

In order to meet the needs of Pakistan Rangers and repair of security cameras, the ECC has approved Rs1.8 billion supplementary budget destined for the Ministry of Interior.

Published in Daily Times, March 6^th 2019.