*ISLAMABAD: *There will be no substantial increase in defence budget ofPakistan Armed Forces despite the rising Indian war hysteria.
The military will get only a regular increase and there will be no unusualincrease in the defence budget for the next fiscal year, the adviser to theprime minister on finance said on Monday.
The announcement came in response to expectations that the defence budgetcould get an extraordinary increase in the wake of the approval of a newArmed Forces Development Plan.
“The defence budget will get a regular increase and there will not be anyextraordinary increase in the defence budget”, Dr Miftah Ismail told mediapersons after addressing a conference on Pakistan’s investment potential.
For the outgoing fiscal year 2017-18, the defence budget stood at Rs920.2billion. For the new fiscal year 2018-19, the stated defence budget couldbe increased to Rs1.013 trillion, up by roughly 10 per cent, said sourcesin the Finance Ministry.
They said that the military had demanded higher than Rs920 billion budgetfor the outgoing fiscal year. But the former Finance Minister had promisedthat additional budget would be given during the course of the fiscal year,said the sources.
Military pensions, armed forces development programme, receipts from theCoalition Support Fund and United Nations Missions are not part of thestated defence budget.
Dr Miftah Ismail said that the government would substantially increasepensions for retired employees on the instruction of Prime Minister ShahidKhaqan Abbasi.
In order to compensate losses to the tax base because of the three-foldincrease in income tax exemption threshold, the government will give onemillion more potential taxpayers to the FBR, said the adviser.
He said that these people have been identified by National Database andRegistration Authority through their consumption patterns.
From July this year, the government will increase the income tax exemptionthreshold from annual incomes of Rs400,000 to Rs1.2 million. This woulderase 522,000 income tax return filers out of 1.26 million.
Former finance minister Ishaq Dar also made a similar claim regardingbringing 700,000 new individuals under the tax net with the help of NADRA.But nothing happened.