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MOSHARRAF ZAIDI Founding partner, Tabadlab

| 2024-06-17

Even in the age of populism, budgets remain the most profound expression of politics and political will.What adjectives can aptly describe
the politics and political will expressed in the FY25 budget that this government has just announced? Farcical may be too harsh. Every year,
the federal PSDP (the portfolio of `development` or capital investments the government intends to make) is a large and unrealistic number.
And every year, the actual money spent under the PSDP is tens, nay, hundreds of billions less than what is allocated. The PML-N
government allocated Rs975bn for the federal PSDP last year.

Actual spend was barely Rs400bn. So what did the same PML-N government do in this budget? It ramped up the PSDP to a dizzying
Rs1,400bn.

Daronomics has been firmly entrenched since last year and the caretaker government doubled down on key pillars of the Dar approach to
economic management. Muhammad Aurangzeb has made a brave attempt to lead reform, and shoulder responsibility but the visible hand of
Dar has stymied him on both fronts. The result is a nothingburger of a budget. This, apparently is how Pakistan does fiscal consolidation.
Some set piece favourites are back: exemptions have been removed (they`ll roII over on this), BISP has been given a higher allocation (it
should be even higher) and government employees, civil servants and government pensioners have been upgraded on flight never-ending-
gravy-train. •

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