Budget and CPEC.

Concerns over Pakistan's national budget are high at the time, as Pakistan's growth rate has been declining for the past two years and its effects are being felt to a large extent in the lives of ordinary people. Apart from this, the coronavirus has also caused a strange calamity not only for Pakistan but the whole world, which it has never faced before. The epidemic of coronavirus is affecting the socio-political and economic system of the world. Even in this epidemic, Pakistan's hopes for economic growth are still strong, as Pakistan's previous Nawaz Sharif government signed the CPEC agreement with China, which is very important for China, but also for Pakistan. It is believed that due to this China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan will also find a way that will lead to the solution of its economic problems. Because of the importance of CPEC since its inception, economists have been paying close attention to how much money has been set aside in Pakistan's national budget to complete CPEC projects and CPEC, which projects have been given more importance and which projects have not been included in the budget.

It is not unnecessary to mention that CPEC will benefit every part of Pakistan but the money is kept only in the federal budget of Pakistan as it is a federal subject and the provincial budgets have no direct link with the federal subjects. Therefore, when the discussion on the budget for the next financial year began in Pakistan, economists and political leadership at the time thought that the government was connected to CPEC in order to achieve its future economic goals, that the government will give importance and allocate a large part of the budget for this. But this did not happen and the expectations attached to the federal budget were not met, but even so, this does not lead us to disappointment. CPEC has still made its way into the federal budget, but economists and politicians, and especially the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Shehbaz Sharif, are not satisfied with the federal budget. He believes that more money could have been allocated for CPEC and it should have been. However, it is hoped that next year, the situation will be better than this.

If we look at the current budget, we will see that Rs21 billion has been set aside for CPEC. Due to the depreciating value of the Pakistani currency, this amount feels low anyway. Then this amount has been set aside only for a few major road and railway...