The budget process
There’s much to celebrate, of course, in yet another government delivering its final budget – three in a row now. And there’s the additional feather in the cap that comes with the first five-percent-plus figurein ten years. Plus Dar sb was spared the shouting and jeering that came Haffez Pasha’s and Omar Ayub’s way in ’12 and ’07 respectively. But nowhere between patting himself on the back and putting feathers in his own cap did the finance minister mention that this was also the fifth consecutive time that his ministry missed virtually every major target. The 5.28pc growth rate he’s celebrating is short, by a few good points, of the 5.7pc target.
What purpose does such an exercise serve anyway? Why stand there every year and make that lengthy speech when everybody – government, opposition and the people – knows these numbers mean nothing. They are just a reflection of the political situation of the time. This year, for example, neither the inadequate growth nor the glaring deficit could keep the government from presenting a text book election year budget, even though everyone knows how that’ll just pressure the fragile economy even further, without improving the lot of the people, just to get votes for ’18.
Therefore, projected tax receipts of Rs4.33t, development outlay of Rs1.001t, increase in non-tax receipts by 7pc, etc, have zero intrinsic value. Eventually they will be numbers that the government was supposed to achieve but didn’t/couldn’t, as always. Most people would not keep their jobs if they missed their targets time after time again. Yet our finance minister’s escape such extremely demanding job requirements, it seems. For all it is worth, our budget process is an exercise in futility.