QUETTA – Balochistan Finance Minister Mir Asim Kurd Gaillo has said that the provincial government decided to set up copper refinery and processing plant with initial investment of Rs8.5 billion in the province.
Addressing a post-budget press conference on Tuesday, he said that the Reko Diq project was the world biggest resource and the provincial government had decided to set up copper refinery and processing plant in the province to get maximum revenue thus Rs8.5billion had been earmarked in the Budget 2011-12 for the purpose.
Flanked by Finance Secretary Dostain Jamaldini, the mister said effective measures had been taken to cut non-developmental revenue expenditure by more than Rs9b to increase development spending to Rs25.58b from the Rs22b and create a surplus of Rs790m by December.
“Provincial economy has improved considerably during the year because of initiatives to reduce unemployment, increase budgetary allocations for social sector and economic infrastructure” he claimed.
Kurd said the government was pursuing a policy of self-reliance and reducing the debt burden on the province and the future generation.
He said that Balochistan was the first province in the country to have retrieved its federal cash development loans (CDL).
He said that in order to increase province’s own revenues, the government had constituted an advisory committee to recommend actions for improving provincial taxes. “Province has already taken measures to improve the collection of tax and non-tax revenues and was hopeful of meeting the target for the current year” he said, and adding that the government had neither imposed any new tax nor revised the rates of the existing taxes.
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