Balochistan budget.

BUDGETS represent the political choices a government makes.

Apart from a few minor changes here and there, the choices made by Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan Alyani since he came to power have not been all that different from those made by his predecessors. The lack of transparency and accountability in the budget, for example, shows that the results of reforms aimed at bringing about discipline in the public finance management system remain elusive. This is in spite of the government`s claims that it has executed numerous actions to enforce financial discipline and stop leakages and wastage of its meagre resources. Similarly, the provincial finance managers continue to follow the conventional incremental budget-making process, projecting unrealistic income and expenditure estimates for a given fiscal year on the basis of certain percentage changes over the previous year. The budgeted income estimates are divorced from reality and expenditure projections aren`t based on service delivery needs. This allows the government to use funds by diverting money allocated for one project or sector to another, without anyone questioning the rationale. And so on.

Balochistan`s Rs465.5bn budget for the next year only confirms that the more things change in the province the more they remain the same. The provincial government blames the reduction of Rs30bn in projected federal transfers to the...