ISLAMABAD (Web Desk/APP) – The government aims to reduce the budget deficit from 4.3% of GDP during the current outgoing fiscal year (2015/16) to 3.8 percent of GDP in the current fiscal year 2016/17.
Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar, while addressing a post-budget press conference on Saturday said that through an amendment in fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act 2005, the government was about to undertake two deep-rooted reforms in the fiscal management system.
He said that the government was putting a statutory limit on the credit of the federal government.
Starting 2017-18, in three years, the federal deficit would be brought down to 4% of GDP and thereafter to 3.5 percent.
Second, the debt to GDP ratio would be brought down to 60% of GDP in the next two years and then over a 15 years period, it would be brought down to 50%.
He said that tax revenue would be enhanced from Rs 3104 billion in 2015-16 to Rs 3621 billion in 2016-17.
The minister said that the government had continued to focus on energy and around 10,000 MW of additional electricity would be generated by March 2018.
He said, for power, a total of Rs. 380 billion have been set aside in the FY 2016/17 federal budget.
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