QUETTA: Finance Mini­ster Mir Zahoor Ahmed Buledi has said that the coalition government has deci­ded to establish the province’s own bank with the name of ‘Balochistan Bank’.

The decision to open the bank will be included in the upcoming provincial budget to be presented in the Balochistan Assembly on June 18 (today).

Speaking at a press conference along with provincial Minister for Revenue Mir Saleem Ahmed Khosa here on Wednesday, Mr Buledi said the government was making efforts to increase provincial resources to provide more funds for development of Balochistan.

“We are introducing legislation to increase our revenues,” Revenue Minister Saleem Khosa said, adding that work is under way to digitise land revenue in Quetta, Jaffarabad, Nasir­abad, Pishin and Gwadar, and after a month tax would be received through banks, instead of submission of the tax amount with Patwari.

Giving some details of the next financial year’s budget, Finance Minister Buledi said that the size of the budget is expected to be Rs500 billion which would be more than the previous year’s budget.

He said the provincial government had managed to reduce the deficit in the previous budget by 50 per cent and bridged the gap by collecting provincial revenues of Rs30 billion while the target was Rs40bn.

The finance minister said that in the outgoing financial year, an amount of Rs108bn was allocated for the provincial Public Sector Development Programme and out of this amount Rs75bn had been spent on various development projects in the province.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2021