• Health, education get major allocations
• Govt employees’ salaries up by 10pc
• Minimum pay raised to Rs40,000
• 50,000 families to get house loans
• Lahore remains priority for development schemes
• Credible plan to boost tax revenues missing

LAHORE: The PML-N government in Punjab on Monday proposed a Rs5.33 trillion annual budget for the fiscal year 2025-26, focusing primarily on large infrastructure schemes and freebies for the urban middle classes, especially the youth, as well as small industries and farmers to regain the political ground it had lost in its stronghold in the 2024 election.

The budget features a record Rs1.24tr Annual Dev­elop­ment Programme (ADP), which is Rs240 billion or 25pc greater than the federal Public Sector Development Progr­amme (PSDP), and commits to produce Rs740bn in estimated provincial surplus to meet a key IMF goal to hold down consolidated federal budget deficit.

The Provincial Consoli­dated Fund also includes a one-time income of Rs160bn under the head of ‘supernume­rary resource’ from an undisclosed source. This kind of irregular income is normally used to bridge the budget deficit. In this case, it is speculated to have been added to meet the provincial surplus condition of the IMF programme.

Finance Minister Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman presented the budget in Punjab Assembly.

The budget focuses the social sector with whopping allocations for health, education, infrastructure, local government, public safety and........

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