Pakistan's budget has lost credibility: World Bank.

Byline: Shahbaz Rana

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's budget has further lost its credibility and the public finance management system has also deteriorated, according to a draft report of the World Bank that has downgraded the country's ranking on almost all 31 fiscal management-related indicators.

The Washington-based lender shared the final draft of the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) report with the Ministry of Finance in June. The report carries an objective assessment of Pakistan's public finance management system and its budgets from fiscal year 2015-16 to 2017-18.

But the findings reflect extremely poor performance of the Ministry of Finance that failed to carry out its responsibility and let the fiscal rules violated.

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The World Bank was facing pressure from the Ministry of Finance to soften its report but a senior official of the World Bank told The Express Tribune that on the lender's part the report was final.

Sources said various wings of the Ministry of Finance were putting responsibility on each other but so far no action had been taken in that regard.

When compared with a similar assessment that the World Bank carried out in 2012, the country fared poorer on almost all indicators and seven key pillars. There were hardly two indicators where the score improved while on the other two the score remained unchanged.

In 2012, the country had secured five A grades - the highest score - but in the 2019 assessment there was not even a single indicator where it got A. Pakistan lost the highest score on critical indicators like classification of budget, comprehensiveness of budget information, transparency in inter-governmental fiscal operations, participation in budget process and predictability of direct budget support.

The lowest score is D plus and D. In 2012, the country got only six Ds and D plus but the lowest score reached a staggering 13 in 2019, reflecting extremely poor performance of the finance ministry. In 2012, there were 10 Cs, average score - a figure that stood at eight in 2019.

The final draft of the report showed that Pakistan was assigned the lowest score 'D' on the indicators of reliability of budget due to higher-than-budgeted expenditures and low revenue collection, extent of unreported government operations, public access to key fiscal operations, effectiveness of internal audit, lack of information about service delivery, poor quality and...