KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in the provincial budget presented the revised estimates for total receipts of province for Current Financial Year 2017-18 said the Sindh government is largely dependent on federal transfers which constitute 61 percent of its total revenue.
Murad Ali Shah said that with the unpredictability of these fiscal transfers from the federal to provincial government, budget preparation becomes cumbersome as the projections of non-development expenditure and development portfolio are largely based on these estimates.
Resultantly, provincial development expenditure has to be adjusted to offset the effect. “There is decrease of Rs.28.5 billion in federal transfers in revised estimates 2017-18 as communicated by the federal government,” he said and added receipts of Federal PSDP were slashed to Rs.20.4 billion from Rs.27.3 billion; whereas revised Foreign Project Assistance stands at Rs.27.7 billion as against Rs.42.7 billion.
He said that on the provincial revenue collection side, we were largely able to achieve our provincial tax receipt targets.
He said that the Sindh Revenue Board and Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Department were able to achieve their tax targets. The provincial tax and non-tax receipt is revised to Rs.197 billion against an estimated target of Rs.199.6 billion.