The special meeting of the federal cabinet approved a 10 per cent increase in the salaries of government employees and pensions of retired employees, including proposals for Budget 22-2021.
Prime Minister Imran Khan presided over a special cabinet meeting before the federal budget 22-2021 to be presented in the National Assembly.
During the meeting, the Finance Division briefed Prime Minister Imran Khan on the budget.
Prime Minister Imran Khan gave special instructions to the concerned authorities for youth program and food subsidy.
The meeting also considered taxing internet and mobile phones.
It should be noted that the federal government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will present the budget for the financial year 22-2021 in the National Assembly today.
According to the newspaper, Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen will present the budget while the meeting will start at 4 pm.
The budget presented today will be the third federal budget of the current government.
It may be recalled that yesterday, Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen, while presenting the National Economic Survey for the financial year 2020-20, had said that now the focus should be on growth instead of stabilizing the economy.
Shaukat Tareen had said that when Quod 19 was started, about 56 million people were employed, which was reduced to 35 million, ie 20 million people became unemployed.
The finance minister said that in the last budget, the government had projected a growth rate of 2.1 per cent, while the IMF and World Bank estimates were even lower. Incentives for gas, electricity and other items were given to them and as a result large scale manufacturing showed positive growth which was about 9%.
"Agriculture grew by 2.77 per cent. Although we feared negative growth due to poor cotton, the other four crops, wheat, rice, sugarcane and maize, performed better," he said.
The industrial sector grew by 3.6 per cent while services grew by 4.4 per cent against its target of 2.6 per cent.
Shaukat Tareen said Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) grew by 9%, which helped boost the overall growth rate.
