KP budget.

HE Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government`s budget for the next fiscal year is, to say the least, ambitious. Some may term it unrealistic because it does not take into account the potential impact of the expected revenue shocks in a contracting economy that is faced with massive challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the locust plague. This is despite the fact that the provincial finance minister, Taimur Khan Jhagra, has projected that KP could suffer a substantial shortfall of Rs161bn in its revenue receipts during the last quarter of the present financial year. With the negative effects of the coronavirus contagion on the economy predicted to last at least through the first half of the next fiscal year, few outside the government believe that growth can recover next year and generate the revenue needed to finance development and other expenditures of the federal and provincial governments. How much loss the incoming locust plague will inflict on the economy is also not known as yet. Hence, many are wondering as to why the provincial PTI government did not factor in the impact of uncertainty spawned by the Covid-19 infection and the fresh wave of locust swarms in its significantly inflated income estimates for the next year.

The ambitious income estimates apart, there is no doubt that the KP government has made the right choices in the proposed...