Islamabad: President Arif Alvi has signed the Finance Bill 2019-20 which was forwarded to him after approval from the National Assembly last week.
The treasury benches rejected almost all the amendments to the finance bill moved by the opposition members after there was a discussion on them by both sides, whereas amendments moved by Minister for Finance and Revenue Hammad Azhar was adopted by the house.
The total outlay of the budget is Rs7.022 trillion, focusing on fiscal consolidation, revenue mobilisation and austerity measures.
The Money Bill includes a new stringent fiscal law that it added to the Finance Act at the last minute.
The recommendations were moved by Chairman of the committee Senator Farooq H. Naik in the House which were adopted by the house unanimously.
The Upper House approved the recommendation of Senate body by Senator Shibli Faraz to abolish Riba from the country’s economy at the earliest.
Meanwhile proposals by Senator Kalsoom Parveen to give 10% of basic salary as ad-hoc relief to all federal government employees of grade 17 and above and 20% to the employees of up to grade 16.
The Senate also approved the recommendation of Senate body that ad-hoc relief allowances of 10% for the year 2016, 2017, and 2018 should be merged in the basic pay of civil servants and armed forces.
The Senate recommended that the tax rate on dividend income was 15% for individuals which was very high and it should be reduced to 10% as provided earlier.
The Senate also approved the recommendation to give tax exemption for all salaried people, earning up to Rs 90,000 per month.
It is recommended to allow storage battery manufacturers to sell its products for solar solutions at zero rate of sales tax to remain at par with commercial importers of solar solutions.
At the start of the proceedings, Azhar moved the motion to present the finance bill before the house for consideration and voting.
After voice voting on the motion to introduce the bill, the opposition challenged the vote and asked the Speaker for a head count.
One hundred and seventy-six (176) members of the treasury benches favoured the motion while 146 members of opposition opposed it.
After the passage of the motion with the majority vote, the minister introduced the finance bill which was passed by the house with the majority vote.
