Realistic economic indicators.

Byline: Muhammad Zahid Raffat

Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI)'s federal government headed by Prime Minister Imran Khan has presented its first formal budget for financial year 2019-20 which has since been debated at length and passed amidst lot of noise and obstructions by the opposition parties jointly and is under implementation from July01,2019, the first day of the new fiscal year. PTI had come into power in August 2018 as a result of its securing majority of seats in free, fair and orderly general election of July 25, 2018. But it had more or less to carry on with the federal budget for 2018-19 which was presented by PML(N) federal government as early as April 27, 2018 setting a new record of six budget is five years stipulated constitutional tenure and stepping down on May 31,2018.

PM Imran Khan and his economic team managers have been quite frankly and honestly telling the people about severe economic crisis which the PTI government has inherited and as such all economic indicators in its first formal federal budget for financial year 2019-20 have been kept somewhat on lower side in a more realistic and achievable manner keeping all the bitter, painful and factual facts and figures view. Prior to talking about the salient features of the PTI's first formal federal budget, on the basis of facts and figures available from official sources, it is pertinent to mention here that Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been kept at the lowest level of 2.4 per cent and inflation at higher side between=n 11-13 per cent against 3.3 per cent and 7.2 per cent respectively of revised budget for financial year 2018-19.

Furthermore, total revenue has been estimated at 16.7 per cent, total expenditure at 23.8 per cent and fiscal balance at:7.1 per cent of GDP for the just commenced new financial year. As is already known to the people by and large, the total outlay of the budget for fiscal year 2019-20 has been placed at Rs 8238.1 billion which was 38.9 per cent higher than the 2018-19 budget estimates of Rs 5932.5 billion which was increased to Rs 6409.3 billion in the revised estimates.

Resources availability during current financial year was Rs 7899.1 billion against Rs 4917.2 billion budget estimates and Rs 5062.8 billion in ther revised estimates for the last financial year.

There are two types of resources i.e. internal and external. The internal resources comprise of revenue receipts, capital receipts and and estimated surplus of provincial...