QUETTA: With the budget for fiscal year 2024-25 pending approval, the Balochistan Assembly on Thursday passed supplementary grants worth Rs47 billion for the outgoing financial year.

Finance Minister Mir Shoaib Nosherwani presented 45 grant demands in the house, only three days before the end of FY 2023-24.

Supplementary grants are presented when a government fails to meet its expenditures from the amount allocated in the budget.

Since opposition members moved no cut motion, all 45 demands for non-development extra expenditures were approved.

The highest amount, Rs13.78 billion, was spent on pensions and other benefits for the Balochistan government’s retired employees.

The extra amount spent on the salaries of Balochistan police and Levies force was also approved, along with Rs5.93bn for the Provincial Disaster Management Authority expenditures during the financial year 2023-24.

There were no demands for development sector grants as most of the money allocated for PSDP for the year 2023-24 was not spent.

Earlier, during the general budget debate, Maulvi Noorullah, an independent MPA from Qila Saifullah, called the budget “unfair and unjust”. “The 700,000 population of my constituency has been neglected in roads, sanitation, forests, environment and education schemes.”

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2024