Before the session, Prime Minister Shehbaz questions the contribution of the country’s elite to National Hacienda.
The Minister of Finance, Muhammad Aurengzeb, will present the annual federal budget on Tuesday, which is expected to balance growth, austerity and taxes, during a national assembly session chaired by President Sardar Ayaz Sadiq.
As soon as the session began, the members of the opposition began to sing slogans.
At the beginning of his speech, the Minister of Finance said: “This budget is being presented for a historical moment, as the country advanced in difficult times.”
“This budget is presented at a historical moment when the nation showed unity [and] Determination, ”he said, mentioning the recent Pak-India conflict.
“The spirit with which we protect our national sovereignty, we must guarantee our financial security in the same way,” he emphasized.
He continued through the noisy session: “Pakistan has now achieved economic stability and is moving towards a Pakistan who is prosperous.”
The minister highlighted the current account surplus, the remittances and stability of the rupee, while mentioning the positive reports of the Moody’s and Fitch international credit qualification agencies that improved the Pakistan rating.
The federal budget for fiscal year 2026 has a total disbursement, the sum of expenses and net loans of funds, of RS17.573 billion, which represents a 6.9 percent decrease in the budget of the previous year.
Aurengzeb said that it was inevitable to point to a 14 % GDP imposed relationship and added that achieving the national objectives was “impossible without the transformation of the Federal Income Board (FBR).”
The Government has established an ambitious tax collection objective for the FBR in RS14,131 billion billions, an increase of 8.95 percent with respect to the objective of last year.
Detailing that transformation, the minister listed the B2B electronic voice, the AI -based auditing systems for the Sales Tax and Income Taxes, the Electronic Billing and Face Audits, and a new central control unit to centralize data collection, among other steps.
By expanding the results, he said that 390,000 not filtering of high value taxes were identified through data integration, with recovered RS300m. The minister also stressed that there was a 100 percent increase in the number of fiscal files, taking income to RS105bn.
“For the first time, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) has recognized the income of RS389B through the application of the law,” he said.
He also took a mockery to those who were giving the alarm for a mini budget, “and added that the government had not taken such movement.
The financial tsar said there was a 31 % reduction in electricity prices, as well as the 50 percent reduction in protected consumers.
Mentioning the privatization of distribution companies, he said: “Professional meetings have been released from political corruption.”
Then, the minister announced that the government had made plans to “acquire cheap energy.” Observing the closure of electric central costs and reforms in the oil and gas sector, he said that Turks and other international companies were willing to invest in Pakistan.
He mentioned the investment promise of $ 5 billion of Reko DIQ and pointed out the deregulation of the fuel price with the aim of promoting competition.
“The gold mines in Reko diq are a key part of our future. The feasibility study of the plan was completed in January,” he said.
“We expect $ 71 billion in cash flows [as well as] $ 7 billion in taxes and $ 8 billion in royalties, he said, qualifying the project as a “change of play.”
‘What has the elite did?’
Before the session, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after a federal cabinet meeting, questioned the contributions made to the National Treasury for the country’s economic group, before the presentation of the budget for fiscal year 26.
“Today, the federal cabinet will discuss the budget and give its approval. In the previous quarter, the entire nation has faced these challenges. This is not an ordinary achievement.
“The sacrifices made by the common man, the load that the salaried class has taken in the previous budget. They say ‘we are wage earners [class] But it still gave RS400bn to the Treasury […] What have the elite and rich groups contributed compared to us? ” He added.
“This is a question that the elite, including me, has to answer,” said the prime minister.
In addition, he said: “Pakistan is standing at a point where we have to take off,” and added that the country’s stability indicators were satisfactory.
“Either the inflation rate, whether the policy rate, its exports increased, their remittances have seen a quantum leap, their exports of IT have increased and have a lot of potential to increase.”
More to follow.
