Opposition leaders condemn budget 2017

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar presented annual budget for FY 2017-18 on Friday in the National Assembly, following which politicians from opposition parties started condemning the recommendations of the fifth federal budget.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s leader Asad Umar spoke to media representatives and criticised the recommendations laid forth in the budget.

This government is not farmer-friendly instead it is an enemy of them, he said.

The country which is buried under debt cannot be free, the PTI leader said.

He said that the PML-N government took the same amount of loans within 45 months that the Pakistan People’s Party government took in five years’ tenure.

Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan rejected the fiscal budget for the year 2017-18. Party Chief Farooq Sattar called the budget ‘status quo budget’.

Sattar said that taxes have been piled up on the poor. Sattar said the ratio of sales tax should be reduced from 17 percent to nine percent.

Petroleum levy should be ended along with sales tax, said Sattar.

“There is nothing for the youth, women, non-Muslims in the current budget,” said the MQM-P chief.

The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) government on Friday presented its fifth and possibly last budget before general elections in 2018, earmarking a total of Rs 4,757 billion in expenditures for the next fiscal year.

The GDP growth rate was 5.3% in the last fiscal year — highest in ten years, he stated, adding that it is for the first time that Pakistan's economy has grown to over $300 billion. "This shows the strengthening of the economy," said the finance minister.

Earlier in the day, with hours merely before the budget was presented, farmers from across Punjab gathered in Islamabad's Red Zone to protest and demand their 'due rights'.

The agitated farmers also pelted stones at policemen who had assembled to stop them from venturing further.

The police used tear gas and water canon to disperse the farmers, moving them into Jinnah Avenue.