Pakistan in Media

Dawn, Pakistan, Saturday, 04 Jul, 2009
PRIME Minister Gilani has announced the doubling of development funds allocated to members of parliament for projects identified by them in their constituencies.

This hefty addition to development allocations made after the approval of the budget by parliament leaves no doubt where the control of the budget lies.

Interestingly, a day later, the prime minister told ministries to hold monthly review meetings to avoid supplementary demands for grants.
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The News International, Thursday, June 25, 2009
ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Thursday passed the Rs 2.9 trillion federal budget for the year 2009-10 after the passage of finance bill.

All the amendments by the government in the bill presented by Minister of State for Finance Hina Rabbani Khar were passed by the house.

The budget, presented in the National Assembly on the 13th of this month would be effective from July 1st.

The budget focuses on achieving the goal of sustainable economic growth and ensuring welfare of the people on equitable basis.
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Dawn, Pakistan, Tuesday, 23 Jun, 2009
BALOCHISTAN’S budget for 2009-10 is a reminder of the province’s deep-rooted economic and political problems. Facing the challenges of growing political violence and rising poverty, Quetta is in dire need of permanent sources of funds for development. Though the provincial government will spend Rs18.5bn on development next year, the amount is not nearly enough to build a durable economic infrastructure or to provide quality public services like education, healthcare, drinking water, roads, etc to the population of the province. Given its vast size, sparsely scattered population and difficult terrain, Balochistan must spend a lot more on its development than the rest of the country. For example, a road 500km long in Punjab would link scores of villages, towns and cities and connect hundreds of thousands of people if not millions. The same length of road in Balochistan would cost more and hardly connect a couple of villages and a few hundred people.
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Dawn, Pakistan, Tuesday, 23 Jun, 2009
There is a reason why I have begun this article on the budget with a reference to the ongoing struggle between the state and non-state actors and why I said that extremism is not the only problem the country faces. There is also the problem of an economy that has suffered perhaps the most severe shock in the country’s history.
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The News International, Pakistan, Friday, June 19, 2009
ISLAMABAD: The Petroleum and Natural Resources Ministry has expressed its reservations over the imposition of carbon surcharge on motor gasoline, diesel and other POL products in the new federal budget, without taking it into confidence, it is learnt.

“The ministry has written a letter to the Finance Division, noting its reservations,” an informed official told The News. He said that the Petroleum Ministry was in the dark about the imposition of the carbon surcharge and its mechanism, and abolition of the Petroleum Development Levy (PDL).
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Daily Times, Pakistan, Thursday, June 18, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Finance Adviser Shaukat Tareen on Wednesday hinted at amendments to the Finance Bill to remove the business community’s concerns relating to the 2009-10 budget.

“I will hold a meeting with industrialists in the next two days to get feedback to finalise the amendments,” Tareen informed the Senate Standing Committee on Finance.

The finance adviser added the agriculture sector must be brought under the tax net in 2010-11, saying he would resign if he was not able to achieve that.
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The News International, Pakistan

Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Pakistan's nobility now has its own equivalent of Marie Antoinette's 'let them eat cake' comment. Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tarin, defending the imposition of 'carbon tax,' and the impending rise in oil prices, straight-facedly advised the people of Pakistan to use public transport. The question that the public will want to ask the honourable finance adviser is, 'what public transport?' Mr Tarin's comment may have been well-intentioned, but it reflects a continuation of our leadership's detachment from ground realities. The reality is that the public transport system, whatever there is of it, is in a shambles - particularly in the urban centres of Pakistan. Not one of the major cities can boast a half-decent transport system.
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Daily Times,Pakistan, Monday, June 15, 2009
comment: Shahzad Chaudhry
Dependence on donors’ pledges is so pervasive that most television channels now need to run a line asking the nation to pray for the success of the prayer on which the Budget is premised!

In the days leading up to the next fiscal year’s budget, what has been keeping the mandarins of the finance ministry engaged has been another matter — how poor are Pakistanis?

By all accounts, and some verified numerical processes of none other than the World Bank, the poverty rate for 2007-8 had been determined at 17 percent. This would have been a six percent reduction in poverty over the 2006-7 performance of the economy when the poverty figure came down from thirties to around 23 percent.
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Daily Times, Monday, June 15, 2009
The Budget 2009-10 has an outlay of Rs 2.48 trillion with an anticipated deficit of Rs 722.5 billion or 4.9 percent of GDP, aiming at a growth rate of 3.3 percent of the GDP. A negative reaction to it at the national level has already set in, which is intense despite the fact that this kind of thing happens routinely every year, starting many decades ago when the country first tilted into political instability, bad law and order and terrorism. Budgets have always “disappointed” everyone and not lived up to their projections. Hence the lack of confidence in budgetary predictions.
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The News International, Pakistan
Sunday, June 14, 2009
We made a similar prediction when we wrote the editorial for fiscal 2008-09’s budget and regrettably what we said last year seems to apply this year as well – that many of the targets mentioned by Minister of State for Finance and Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar in her budget speech on Saturday seemed overly optimistic. Consider the basics: the government foresees a 23.5 per cent increase in total expenditure to 2.48 trillion rupees (around $30.5 billion) with development spending (the PSDP allocation) increasing by around 17.45 per cent to 646 billion rupees. The official news agency which gave details of this on the wires as the speech was being delivered in parliament did not shy away from calling the PSDP (Public Sector Development Programme) allocation the “highest in the country’s history”. Obviously, whoever used such a phrase is not familiar with the fact that such allocations need to rise over time, mainly because more funds and resources are needed to supply an ever-growing population the same amount of basic services and amenities. This would mean that in all likelihood the PSDP allocation for next year would be even higher and the one for the year after that higher still – and so on and so forth – and should not mean any singular achievement in this regard by the present government. Furthermore, the outgoing fiscal saw several cuts in 2008-09’s budget PSDP allocation so there is no guarantee that the same thing will not be repeated during 2009-2010, especially since we now have a massive IDP situation.
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The News International, Pakistan

Friday, June 12, 2009

Much of what was unveiled by the ministry of finance via the Economic Survey 2008-09 was expected and served to only confirm that the economy is well and truly in recession. A telling statistic was the reduction in imports for 2008-09 -- by over 26 per cent compared to the previous year. Since a country's imports are a direct correlation of its income and GDP, the single statistic alone should be enough to confirm that the economy is now on a recessionary path. Another related statistic is growth in the manufacturing sector which actually shrank by 3.3 per cent during 2008-09 compared to an increase of 4.8 per cent last year (large-scale manufacturing, a sub-head, shrunk by 7.7 per cent). The economy's growth rate was markedly down from estimates made at the beginning of the financial year – when it was predicted to be well above five per cent – at a worryingly low two per cent. This is more or less half of what the economy managed to achieve during 2007-08 which was first put at 5.8 per cent and has now been clipped to 4.1 per cent – which means a reduction by almost 50 per cent! This is to be expected given the significant pressures on the economy: the worldwide recession (other countries have suffered far worse, a case in point being several EU states where GDP is predicted to actually in real terms) and the fallout of the war on terror in terms of a vastly deteriorated law and order situation and its obvious consequence in terms of a negative outlook for business and investment prospects.

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By Kaiser Bengali
Wednesday, 10 Jun, 2009

THE budget for the year 2009-10 is about to be presented to parliament. There are huge expectations, given the scale of the economic crises the people are facing. These cannot and should not be subsumed as an appendix to the crises the economy is facing.

For the economy, there are concerns about revenue generation, budget deficit, current account deficit, foreign exchange reserves, GDP growth rates, industrial growth rates, stock market indexes, corporate profits, etc. It is, however, important for budget-makers to be reminded of the real purpose of all economic-planning exercises, including budget-making: the welfare of the people. And the variables that concern the people directly are unemployment, poverty and inequality.

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Dawn, Pakistan
Saturday, 06 Jun, 2009

THE federal government will spend Rs421bn to build socioeconomic infrastructure under its Public Sector Development Programme during the next fiscal. Such measures are even more crucial in these times of economic slowdown and falling private investment. The PSDP spending must kick-start the economy and revive growth, which is projected to drop to just two per cent this year from 5.8 per cent last year. Also, it is a tool to help remove structural rigidities and imbalances like energy and communication infrastructure shortages that have hampered economic growth in the past. Besides, it can create thousands of new jobs and alleviate poverty.

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