ISLAMABAD, June 13: The budget has no ethical basis and reflects the myopic economic policies of the government. Chairman Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf Imran Khan said this in his reaction to the federal budget 2004-2005 here on Sunday.

Imran Khan said though the macroeconomic indicators may have improved thanks to the 9/11 incident, its impact on the majority was nowhere to be seen. Unemployment is unprecedented and the utilities rates continue to skyrocket.

He said Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz had failed to live up to his promises, as the percentage of indirect taxes compared to direct taxes on income had increased. Contrary to claims of the government, independent surveys confirm that poverty has dramatically increased over the last decade, he said.

Despite increase in the budgetary allocations for health and education, these are well below those in comparable countries in Asia. Imran Khan demanded that the government should stop levying surcharges and levies on natural gas and petroleum, as the revenue collected under this head belonged to the provinces.

Federal surcharges and levies are only imposed to raise resources for emergencies or calamities and that too for a limited period of time only. The PTI chief demanded that pensions should be the same irrespective of the retirement year.

The older the pensioners, the greater their needs and yet their pension is calculated based on their last salary drawn. He said the government should offer subsidies for the poorer sections of society.

If EU and US together subsidise their agriculture to the tune of $360 billion annually, we must subsidise electricity for farmers and culminate GST on agricultural inputs.

Imran Khan said if poverty alleviation was the central theme of the economic policies of the government then the resource sharing should be based on poverty. He said the present NFC formula ignored the factors where the federating units differed widely in terms of per capita income, population density, administrative infrastructure ability to raise taxes, and fiscal discipline.

He said the basis of determining resource distribution between provinces should be equity and efficiency. Meanwhile, Naib Amir of Jamaat-i-Islami, Punjab, and MMA MNA from Islamabad, Mian Mohammad Aslam, has termed the budget 2004-2005 a continuation of the capitalist and anti-people policies.

He said the government continued to violate the constitution by adhering to the policy of evading the vital requirements of an interest-free economy. He criticized the superficial relief given to the common man while greater relief was provided to the capitalists, industrialists and traders.

He said mere 10 paisa per unit reduction of power charges for the common man was a cruel joke, while the genuine measures needed for addressing poverty and unemployment by launching mega project were not taken.

He said the negligible raise in pensions was insufficient for the poor masses whereas the budget fell much short of the expectations of the growers since no revolutionary step was taken to give the much-needed boost to the agriculture sector.

He said mere reduction of the price of one fertiliser would do nothing to reduce the input cost of poor cultivators. Mian Aslam, however, praised the reduction of interest for HBFC clients and simplification of procedure for providing loans to the industrialists.

Similarly, the People's Rights Movement (PRM) has rejected the federal budget and termed it an elitist and anti- people. The PRM organized a "people's budget open kutchery" in Rawalpindi on Saturday evening in which the participants bitterly criticised the budget.

"This budget as well as those presented before it have been prepared by a small group of bureaucrats under the directions of foreign consultants who have no knowledge of the needs and aspirations of ordinary working class Pakistanis," they said.

"The claims that this budget will reduce poverty are hollow and disproven by the increased defence budget, inordinate debt burden and large number of items to be subjected to the anti- people and regressive general sales tax," they said.

They also said that token measures like reduction of 10 paisa per unit in electricity charges or the 15 per cent increase in pay were pathetic attempts to gloss over the huge economic burden on the working class.