Opposition criticizes spending huge amount under heads of supplementary demands

ISLAMABAD: The Opposition in Lower House of the parliament on Thursday criticized the government for spending huge amount under the heads of supplementary demands for the current fiscal year and claimed that it was mismanagement. Opening debate on supplementary demands for the current fiscal year, PML-N lawmaker Zahid Hamid said that 400 per cent increased was witnessed in supplementary demands as compared to the last fiscal year which was a matter of grave concern. He said that internal and foreign loans borrowing were also increased manifold resulting inflation in the country. He said the government has to depend on domestic borrowing to control fiscal deficit resulting low economic growth in the country.

Zahid Hamid said that the government has failed to take pragmatic steps to achieve revenue target and slash non-development expenditures. He suggested that restructuring in public enterprises was the need of hour to plug black holes in these institutions and save billions of rupees. He said that reforms should also be brought in tax collection system to broaden tax net in the country. Shireen Arshad of PML-N said that amount for superannuation allowances and pensions should be enhanced. She said pensioners were included under this head who were getting a very nominal amount.

Rana Tanveer said that the volume of supplementary demands was much higher. He said that the supplementary demands should be approved from the House in future. Khurrum Dastagir said that the supplementary demands of billions of rupees were the reflection of government’s mismanagement. He said that the government should bring all supplementary demands having volume more than Rs.1 billion except in case of emergency in the House and got it approve. It was totally unjustified that the House approves the supplementary demands by end of every fiscal year. Abdul Qadar Baloch said that the additional demands should benefit the masses. He said that hefty amount was spent under the head of supplementary demands but the government could not even allocate Rs.0.8 billion for electricity transmission line in Balochistan. Chaudhry Saood Majeed said that some of the departments were given more supplementary grants than the actual allocation in the budget.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011