I appreciate and compliment Finance Minister Mr Ishaq Dar and his team for presenting a pro growth budget for the next financial year. In the past three years, the government has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of the average Pakistani and stabilize a nation in tatters. We inherited hyperinflation and financial indiscipline of the highest degree, inhibiting the working class from living lives of dignity, and turned things around to cut our deficit in half, grow the GDP at a 4.7% per-annum rate, improve our balance of trade, bring inflation down to a ten year low and bring tax collection up to historic levels. None of this could have been possible if our budget had not mirrored our vision for the country and what we know it has the potential to be”, said Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Shraif.
In the next fiscal year, we have committed to not only replicate this success, but one-up it. We have chosen to invest in important project Gawadar, a port with increasing international importance with CPEC on the horizon. We have created new subsidies and public investment in agriculture to help our agro-economy and the millions of Pakistanis who depend on its success for a living. We have also committed to investing in infrastructure, roads, railways and the Karachi-Lahore motorway, making us more connected than ever and creating thousands of direct and indirect jobs. After the Paris climate change agreement, we have committed ourselves to recognize the existential threat it poses to our security and the future of our children and are investing over a billion rupees in our climate change division to make sure we don’t gamble with the future of the world. We have increased our allocations in social welfare cash grants programs like BISP, to make sure that millions of poor people, regardless of their income, can live lives of dignity and can break the shackles of poverty. Finally, we have also invested in numerous power projects across the country, to develop a country where livelihoods are no longer dependent on the whims of power outages. There is nothing wrong in our country that can’t be fixed with what is right in country, and that is exactly our plan”, further added the Prime Minister.
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