Finance ministry says report on Dar being handed budget-making process 'misleading, incorrect'

The Ministry of Finance said on Thursday that a media report claiming Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had been handed the budget-making process was “misleading” and “factually incorrect”.

The clarification came after a report published by The Express Tribune said the government had “handed over the responsibility of making the new budget to Dar after it found the initial work below par”.

According to the report, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had constituted a Dar-led committee to “review, analyse and present tax policy proposals” formulated by the Tax Policy Office working under the Finance Division.

Citing a notification, it added: “With the formation of the committee, the final responsibility to finalise roughly Rs215 billion to Rs230bn in new taxes and to grant any tax relief has been handed over to Dar.”

It also mentioned: “The prime minister’s decision to place Dar at the head of the budget committee … suggests that budget-making responsibility, for all practical purposes, no longer rests in the Q Block – the seat of the finance minister.”

In its clarification on Thursday, the finance ministry said it “strongly rejects the misleading and speculative impression created by The Express Tribune story titled ‘PM hands budget-making to Dar’“.

“The story incorrectly portrays the constitution of a high-level review committee by the prime minister as a ‘handover’ of the budget-making process from the Finance Division or as a ‘sidelining’ of the finance minister. This interpretation is factually incorrect, misleading and does not reflect the actual mandate or functioning of the committee,” it said.

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