Daily Times

As Industries Minister Hammad Azhar presented the budget for the new fiscal year, opposition benches in the National Assembly shouted slogans and carried placards bearing messages against Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was also in attendance.

Loud slogans against the prime minister and table-thumping by the opposition benches could be heard as Azhar highlighted the PTI-led government’s efforts to streamline the economy. The speaker of Lower House repeatedly urged members to remain silent and refrain from waving banners, but members of the opposition parties ignored his instructions. Later, the opposition members walked out of the House.

Separately, while the government touted budget 2020-21 as ‘relief budget’, senior opposition leaders from the PPP, PML-N and the JUI-F described it as a ‘people’s enemy’ budget.

Reacting to the budget, PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif predicted that inflation and unemployment would surge as a result of it. “The government first tried to hide behind the PML-N for its failures and now it is doing the same with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the country had witnessed historical setbacks in terms of inflation, unemployment, and business during the incumbent government’s tenure. “This isn’t a budget, but a path to destruction,” said Shehbaz, adding, “Unfortunately, the nation is paying for this government’s incompetence.”

The PML-N president said that his party had taken up the policy of ‘less inflation and more development’. The budget announcements proved that the government is not ready to take the ‘path of reform and wisdom’, he noted. “The current deficit of Rs1.7 billion in tax revenue is the performance of the present government,” he said. “For the first time in 68 years, the country’s GDP has plunged to negative. Is this the incumbent government’s performance?” he asked.

Shehbaz lamented that fiscal deficit had never climbed to double digit yet this government had managed to do this as well. “The budget and its goals are unrealistic, and problems and public difficulties are likely to increase,” he said, adding, “This is the first government that has failed to achieve its set targets of tax revenue, government expenditure, fiscal deficit, and GDP.”

Jamiat Ulema-E-Islam’s (Fazl) Maulana Asad Mehmood, reacting to the budget speech by federal minister Hammad Azhar, said the government had failed to achieve its targets. “This government has plunged the GDP to 0.4%,” he said, adding, “There is a deficit of about Rs900 billion in taxes that were to be collected.”

The JUI-F leader claimed that opposition lawmakers were not provided with copies of the budget. “The government presented three budgets in a year and imposed new taxes on the masses,” he added.

Ameer Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Senator Sirajul Haq has said the federal budget 2020-21 has been prepared on the dictation of the IMF, offering no relief to the pandemic and poverty hit masses.

In a statement issued on Friday, he said the minister had read the accounting statement prepared by the international lending agency for the next financial year. He said that the statement read in the National Assembly was an exercise describing the PTI government had achieved nothing in the past year and it had developed a plan to provide nothing to common man during 2020-21. The PTI government, he said, failed to achieve financial targets for the previous year, putting blame of its incompetency on coronavirus outbreak. He said it is a fact that the country’s economy had almost collapsed under the umbrella of the PTI government even before the outbreak of Covid-19 in March.