When the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government came to power in July, Finance Minister Asad Umar announced he would table a mini-budget to stabilise Pakistan’s faltering economy by creating political consensus around tough economic steps and imposing austerity measures.
Umar presented a reworked budget 2018-19 to parliament on September 18. The amended budget imposed heavy taxes on around 5,000 items of luxury spending (like doubling the excise duty on imported cars with engine capacity of 1800 cc from 10 per cent to 20 per cent and hiking duty on imported upper-end mobile phones from 12 per cent to 17.5 per cent) and doubled