The budget has been announced. While it is being said that this is the ‘election budget’, there wasn’t much in the way of wooing voters in it. Not because the government didn’t try but because there isn’t much in the way of relief in the budget especially one looks closely at the budget. It’s true that the government has increased subsidies and allocated more money to programmes like BISP and Benazir Tractor Scheme but these are all expenditures that will help the suffering of the people in the short run. In the long run, the economy will only suffer due to the effects of the government’s increasing expenditure without growing revenue. Though this government has made an attempt to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio, it has still not done enough. It has still shied from implementing unpopular and politically inexpedient measures like the RGST, an agriculture tax etc.
Our economy is crippling under the weight of our debt. We must be circumspect in our spending. We can’t afford to print notes, we aren’t getting any aid or an IFI bailout any soon thanks to our low international status and we don’t have the gumption to levy the required taxes. In such an event, we cannot afford to increase unsustainable subsidies and that’s precisely what the government has done. There are no capital expenditures that will yield returns to the government. We are pushing our economy deeper and deeper into the debt trap. Relief? Pfft? Ask the ‘common man’ in a few years when our per capita debt is infinitely more than our per capita income.
TAHIR HUSSAIN
Lahore
