Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb presented his inaugural budget on Wednesday with clearly another “longer and larger” IMF bailout package in mind, unveiling aggressive taxation measures, including higher taxes on personal incomes and petroleum products, new taxes on real estate, and the withdrawal of several tax exemptions.
These steps are projected to generate additional revenues of more than Rs2.2 trillion, or 1.8 per cent of GDP, in the next fiscal year.
With an inflationary outlook, this is on top of another Rs1.5tr additional revenue that would automatically accrue next year because of 12pc inflation and 3.5pc economic growth rate.
This would deliver a revenue target of Rs12.97tr — up 40pc from the current year’s revised estimate of Rs9.252tr, which missed the budget target by about Rs163bn.
