Govt spending massively up, subsidies down in last FY.

Byline: Imran Ali Kundi

ISLAMABAD -- The federal and four provincial governments massively slashed the subsidies by over 35 percent in last fiscal year 2017-18.

The federal and provincials governments of the country had paid Rs260 billion as subsidies during the year 2017-18 as against Rs403 billion in preceding year showing reduction of over 35 percent. Pakistan's budget deficit had ballooned to highest ever level of Rs2.26 trillion during last fiscal year despite slashing the subsidies massively. The reduction in subsidies had not controlled the expenditures, which had recorded at Rs7.49 trillion (21.8 percent of the GDP) during last fiscal year.

Spending on subsidies, health, education, law and order, construction of roads, rural development, low cost housing and other sectors are part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme (PRSP) expenditures. The PRSP initiative was launched in 2000 with close collaboration of international lending agencies aimed at improving and monitoring pro-poor spending in Pakistan. The spending of federal and provincial governments on Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme (PRSP) had increased in the previous year.

Overall spending of govts increased by 18.6pc to Rs829.2b

According to data of ministry of finance, the cash stipend given to the poorer segment of the society had also gone down by over 7 percent. An amount of Rs99 billion was spent under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) during previous year from Rs107 billion of the preceding year. Similarly, amount spent on Prime Minister Global SDGs Achievement programme had also reduced to Rs32.6 billion in 2017-18 from Rs42.5 billion of the year 2016-17.

Education

Overall spending of federal and provincial governments had recorded at Rs829.2 billion during 2017-18, which is 18.6 percent higher than the spending of previous year. However, a major portion of education budget Rs721.9 billion was spent on the current expenditures including payment of salaries.

The spending of federal government had increased to Rs126.9 billion in 2017-18 as against Rs108 billion of the corresponding period of last year, registering an increase of 17.5 percent. Punjab's spending on education had enhanced to Rs340.8 billion in 2017-18 from Rs260.6 billion of a year ago. The spending of Sindh on education had recorded an increase of 13.7 percent and...