Tax free Sindh budget with total outlay of over 1.713 trillion rupees for financial year 2022-23 was presented in the provincial assembly on Tuesday.

Chief Minsiter Syed Murad Ali Shah who also holds the portfolio of Finance presented the budget.

Our Karachi correspondent Altaf Pirzado reports that focus has been attached on social safety, economic stability and development of the province.

In his speech, Syed Murad Ali Shah announced 26.850 billion rupees social safety and economic relief package for the poor of the province.

He announced 15 percent increase in salaries of provincial government employees from 1st July this year by merging all the adhoc relief allowances from 2016 to 2021 in basic pay and introducing new and revised pay scale.

He also announced that disparity allowance at the rate of 33 percent of basic pay will be paid to provincial government employees from PBS-1 to BPS- 16 and 30 percent to the employees from PBS-17 and above.

He also announced five percent increase in pensions of retired employees.

Syed Murad Ali Shah announced up gradation of post of police constables from BPS-5 to BPS-7.

He said that an amount 332.165 billion rupees has been earmarked for annual development programme 2022-23 which over one hundred billion rupees more than amount of the outgoing financial year