COVID-19 versus Budget 2020.

The poor masses and government employees had great hopes to benefit from the budget, but it brought disappointments instead of providing any relief.

I would like to point out that the current budget is nothing but playing with the statistical figures just to complete the usual budget formalities.

The government has no vision to steer the country out of the COVID crisis, which is going to increase manifold.

The minds of leadership in the government are frozen as they are working without a vision and have not been able to decide the best course to control the pandemic. This fact is reflected in the budget as we see no extra provisions for the health sector allocated to control COVID-19, which is the real issue today.

COVID will continue to hunt its prey unhindered as there is no effective policy backed by budgetary provisions. We are dealing with this monster in a very casual way and the public is suffering.

The government has confessed that there will be 1.2 million COVID patients by the end of July, whereas I indicated a month ago that there will be over two million cases by mid-July.

The budget has also failed to identify which segment of the society it is directed for. The public at large thinks that it is neither serving the business class nor the daily wager.

The government has clearly failed to demonstrate a sense of leadership when our country is facing problems on every front, whether it's the COVID crisis, the locust invasion or high inflation. Massive unemployment, falling revenues and negative economic growth are among the top failures of the government to contain COVID.

Income tax rates have been raised from 25 to 35 percent. The zero-rating facility for 5 export-oriented sectors was withdrawn last year with the promise of timely refunds, but those industries have been suffering to get timely refunds and it further adds more closures.

No one in the government seems to take the blame or responsibility of inflation, mishaps, air crash, locusts attack, sugar and wheat price debacle.

The new fiscal budget 2020-2021 has been designed in line with a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package as the government puts a ferocious array of taxes on almost all sectors of the economy.

All the income tax payers will bear a significant brunt of the new revenue maximisation effort in the new fiscal year on July 1.

The government has increased income tax rates from 25 percent to 35 percent at present as...

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