ISLAMABAD: For the first time in its history, Pakistan has got a national budget with a trillion rupee Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) covering schools, hospitals, motorways, link roads, electricity grids and dams.
This means Rs6,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. That’s Rs30,000 for every family.
For the first time in history, there is a budget where the government’s expenditure stream is not much different from the previous budget.
For the first time in history, the allocation for the Prime Minister’s Office has actually gone down, from Rs720m to Rs500m, a 45 percent year-over-year cut.
For the first time in history a prime minister has voluntarily given up his discretionary fund worth Rs42bn and also abolished discretionary funds of the federal ministers.
Two other first-timers in a national budget are the shadi tax, withholding taxes on lavish weddings and the drama tax, $1,000 per episode of foreign TV dramas aired on local television channels.
The budget also has a sign of political maturity as in the past governments have always abandoned schemes-whether good or bad-of their predecessors. The Benazir Income Support Programme of targeted subsidies stays.
For the first time since the nationalisation programme began back in the January of 1972 a serious attempt to fill the Rs500bn hole in the so-called Public Sector Enterprises is now under way.
For the first time in four decades, a political will to stop uninterrupted bleeding has cropped out almost from nowhere. Is the will accompanied by capability, only time will provide the answer.
Life being what it is, the budget also has dreams, bubbles and castles in the air. Bringing down the fiscal deficit from Rs2.2trn to Rs1.6trn is one of them.
Others include the floatation of dollar bonds in the international markets, increasing the investment-to-GDP ratio to 20 percent, increasing international reserves by 100 percent and keeping inflation in single digit.
There’s good news on higher education an allocation of Rs57bn and a 50 percent jump in the number of scholarships.
There’s good news on eliminating circular debt as well a time frame of 60 days and a rumoured Rs400bn T-bill auction to wipe off the entire debt.
Pakistan’s new minister of finance did not make favourable or kindly headlines in newspapers yesterday, but he has made history.
The document that he has presented makes him a dreamer and an artist, two in one.
Internews
