ISLAMABAD, June 9: Describing the new budget as pro-elite, the opposition parties on Saturday accused the government of fudging figures and understating defence-related allocations.
People’s Party Parliamentarians spokesman Farhatullah Babar claimed that the defence budget was actually far more than the Rs275 billion shown in budget documents.
Mr Babar said that over Rs40 billion of military pensions reflected as civil expenditure and expenses on other defence-related institutions were shown as civil expenditure. He said that the actual defence allocation was more than Rs330 billion.
“Failing to address the issue of military pensions in the budget amounts to not only fudging the figures but also robbing civil society and squeezing the poor and dispossessed. The ever-increasing military allocations without parliamentary oversight are unjustified, particularly in view of strident drive for peace in the region,” he said.
The PPP leader said the audit of defence expenditures needed to be carried out by parliament to examine whether and how much of the military budget had been used to enhance defence capability. “The budget fails to address the issue of institutional corruption which has brought a bad name to the country and increased poverty,” he said.
The budget, he pointed out, also failed to address the issue of ever-growing military business and the bailout of loss-making military-run units at public expense which created distortions in the economy.
Mr Babar said the government’s claims of providing 20 million jobs and having $15 billion in reserves were a ‘cruel joke’ with the poor who were committing suicide because of unemployment.
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) information-secretary Ahsan Iqbal said there was no concrete remedy presented for controlling high inflation, overcoming mounting trade deficit and stagnant exports. He said the growth in GDP was an outcome of the massive injection of over $65 billion into the economy after the 9/11 incident as for first three years of the Musharraf regime, the growth rate of economy was 2.5 per cent.
Mr Iqbal recalled that in the last budget, it was promised that price-hike would be checked through magistrates, but there had been a record increase in prices.
The PML-N leader termed the increase in salaries and pension ‘very meagre’. He alleged that the government had failed to control overheads and its extravagance had cost billions to taxpayers.
Tehrik-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan said it was the military government’s eighth consecutive budget presented by the rich for the rich. He said the taxation policy of the government relied heavily on indirect taxes. He said an elite military industrial complex was the sole beneficiary of this budget.
Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal leader Munawwar Hassan, in his statement, rejected the federal budget and accused the financial advisers of Gen Musharraf of deceiving the nation.
