LAHORE: The Punjab cabinet on Monday approved the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023 with an estimated total budget outlay of Rs32.26 trillion.

The provincial cabinet also approved supplementary budget for FY 2022-23, as well as the financial bills of the new financial year and the revised estimates for the financial year 2021-22.

According to budget’s outlay, provincial government has allocated over Rs25 trillion under the head of non-development expenditure. Whereas, an amount of Rs685 billion, with an increase of 124 per cent, has been allocated under the head of development budget.

A raise of 15 per cent has been approved in the salaries of the government employees. The government employees will also be given 15 per cent disparity allowance with increased salaries. Therefore, the overall raise in the salaries of the government employees will be 30 per cent.

As per the proposed budget, however, the disparity allowance will be given to the employees of specific government departments. A raise of 10 per cent has been approved in the pensions of the government employees.

Target for tax collection has been set at 400 billion rupees, while the provincial government has also approved the continuity of provision of free laptops to students. For this purpose, 1.5 billion rupees have been allocated.

60 billion rupees will be spent on Lahore’s developmental projects during coming Fiscal Year, the budget’s outlook says, while an amount of 1.5 billion will be spent on Punjab police as well.