Visions are out and roadmaps are in. Visions will soon be replaced with roadmaps, because they have acquired worldwide currency. We have now started demanding from the United States a roadmap for Kashmir, although as a nation we do not have one.

Our roadmap was hijacked by the first martial law in 1958. In the absence of a constitution, the nation has over these years been reduced to the status of a rudderless multitude, drifting on turbulent seas. Fifty-six years after independence, we are still struggling to agree on our political roadmap, LFO, 58(2) b and whatever.

Budget is our annual roadmap of our economic policies. It too lacks direction. Going by the inane documents churned out year after year with a great deal of fanfare, we are heading nowhere. Figures provide a gloss to the failures of the government and instead of informing the people how competently has it performed during the outgoing year, and how determined it is to repeat the performance in the next, conceal the ugly reality.

Official data has always suffered from an inherent lack of credibility. But this time around, they are far more suspect. A large number of articles have already appeared. Dr. Kaiser Bengali of the Social Development and Policy Centre (SDPC) has questioned the credibility of the government’s claim of 5.1 per cent growth during the last year. He estimates it as more like 4.6 per cent.

Similarly figures on overall deficit as well as exports are being received with a heavy pinch of salt. Twenty-one per cent growth in exports is similarly not credible in the face of weak fundamentals. The stabilisation programme achieved at the cost of common man with no voice in the scheme of things, is all that the government can croak about.

The Budget represents a continuum of our directionless policy having lost both credibility and sanctity. The proposed expenditure of Rs805 billion is higher than our income, by 19.8 per cent and is predicated on external receipts of Rs159 billion. This gap is going to widen if the receipts fall short of the target as they usually do. The Table 38 of the Summary of Fiscal Operations indicates a much bigger gap of Rs215 billion, with net revenue receipts at Rs513.5 billion and total expenditure net lending at Rs728.5 billion.

Meanwhile, our debts keep on piling. Living beyond our means is a recipe for an impending disaster. Unless we borrow, we cannot meet the expenditure. Having already mortgaged the future of our children, we are in the process of mortgaging the future of our great grand children without giving them a moment’s thought.

Defence and debt take care of our budget. The latter consumed four per cent of the GDP in the current financial year and is likely to consume more. If pensions and paramilitaries are counted, the expenditure would increase to about six per cent of the GDP. As a percentage of the budget of Rs646b (Rs 805 billion minus external receipts of Rs159 billion), defence consumed 24.8 per cent or 1/4th the budget. Debt servicing which has in recent years overtaken defence as the single largest item of the budget, takes a heavier toll, much of it owing to defence related expenditure in the past.

The extent of fiscal responsibility exercised by this economic team of the present military government with democratic trappings that even the Commonwealth had difficulty accepting is a chimera. They have not performed quite as responsibly as they would have us believe. Going by the documents they over shot the budget for 2002-03 by hefty 8.5 per cent. Averages are indeed intended to conceal the ugly reality. No increase in expenditure during the current financial year has been recorded in any social sector. Out of Rs63 billion spent in excess of the Budget, Rs14 billion went to defence and Rs29 billion in subsidies including Rs20 billion to Wapda alone as a reward for its failure to keep the organization from falling any further. An additional Rs8 billion were again paid to Wapda on behalf of the KESC, as a reward for pushing Kesc further into the mire. Wapda and the KESC between them claimed an excess of Rs28 billion. These three entities claimed an excess of Rs51 billion out of Rs63 billion, or 81 per cent of the total.

Against a misleading average of 8.5 per cent increase during the current financial year, the items that have registered phenomenal increase are defence (9.6 per cent), pensions (0.6 per cent), subsidies (140 per cent) and Un-allocable (2,120 per cent). What on earth is the unallocable category? Is it something meant to represent an unsavoury detail that is not in the interest of the unrepresented taxpayer to know?

Reduction has been recorded in the following heads. Debt servicing registered a decline of 11 per cent, not on account of greater fiscal responsibility but due to a steep decline in interest rates and some write offs in consideration of the services rendered as member of coalition of countries against terrorism. Provincial governments are the other victims of fiscal responsibility. They got 5.2 per cent less under the revised budget, simply because the provincial governments being bureaucratic extension of the federal set up were totally helpless to protest. Instead of Rs44 billion, provincial governments were paid Rs41.7 billion. Amongst the provinces some were more equal. Punjab escaped the scalpel and suffered no indignity of a cut. But the other there provinces were not so lucky, as they lacked representation in the ruling clique.

Even the poorest of the poor, Balochistan that is, was not spared the axe. The cuts were of very high order: Sindh (14.6%), NWFP (9.6 per cent) and Balochistan (6.7 per cent). Imagine the plight of the poor of the poorest province, which is totally helpless before the all-powerful centre. Obviously the provinces had no influence on the decision making in the Ministry of Finance because even their powers of issuing ordinances granted to them under the constitution had been withdrawn. The distribution during the current financial year and the next is unconstitutional because it is based on an expired and therefore unconstitutional NFC award.

This may be a mere coincidence that the revised budget of the current financial year and for the next financial year have the same outlay i.e.Rs805 billion. If the performance is going to be as remarkable, the next year’s revised budget will exceed Rs873 billion.

The ruling clique in cahoots with the IFIs makes all the decisions. One of them is on fiscal responsibility which otherwise would be difficult for our economic managers to demonstrate. Subsidies, usually frowned upon by IFIs, have been projected to go up by 181 per cent to Rs64.5 billion next year as against Rs22.8 billion originally budgeted for the current financial year. The proforma protest of IFIs is only for public consumption as they happily go along with the government as long as they adhere to their core agenda, which includes easing up on imports, expatriation of profits and generally taking care of the multinationals Hubco and IPPs included.

The Minister Finance in his budget speech claimed that the ongoing programme of economic adjustment with the IMF will in’sha Allah be the last such programme. Before the reverberation of his speech died down there was a newspaper report quoting some officials in the Ministry of Finance that Pakistan needed to remain “fiscally responsible” and this could not be possible without the IMF’s strict vigilance.

Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance while admitting that the IMF loan programme has proven to be a double edge sword, lauded its salutary effect on keeping the Ministry of Finance fiscally responsible. If 8.5 per cent excess of the budget on an average, which conceals huge over runs in two or three sectors, qualifies for responsible behaviour, then IMF and the Ministry indeed deserves kudos.

Wheat, sugar, cotton, PASSCO etc., all benefited from the subsidies. Agricultural subsidies, howsoever small, represent a reward to the feudals for their failure to pay their taxes and for helping the bureaucrats in their complicity, incompetence and dishonesty in their enterprise. If these wasteful subsidies are not given, the money saved could easily be diverted to health and education, the two sectors of basic importance to the people.

The fiscal managers of the government, in order to earn the dubious distinction of presenting a fourth budget in a row easily succumbed to the pressure from the most powerful quarters jealously looking after defence, Wapda and the KESC. If they had shown a greater mettle in withstanding the pressure like they did by spending less on development, education and provincial shares they could easily have maintained the sanctity of the budget, and earned the gratitude of the people for fiscal responsibility. I am sure that this irresponsible excess expenditure must have been sanctioned within minutes of appropriate orders from outside the Ministry. IFI’s endorsement of their fiscal irresponsibility strangely exposes their real interest in providing props to undemocratic governments and in making their careers.

PSDP next year has been increased from Rs134 billion to Rs160 billion. Actual expenditure during the current financial year was much less than budgeted, that is Rs131.7 billion. Admittedly the revised expenditure does not appear right either, because most of the amount transferred to Wapda etc., has been shown to have been spent, where it may be lying unspent. Similarly, PSDP being highly vulnerable to cuts is bound to suffer the same fate next year.

More important than the size of the PSDP is it’s content and quality. Rs36 billion would go to Wapda and the National Highway Authority, half of it a total waste meant to sustain a Vision. The development programmes undertaken by Wapda are devoid of economic merit and represent a blurred vision of priorities. They will have no effect either on averting recession or reducing poverty, because say, in case of raising of Mangla, if it does not get mired in controversy, no benefit would accrue because more than half the allocation is earmarked for compensation to the land owners. Similarly, Mirani Dam is a non-starter because there is not enough water to store after the dam is completed. Katchi canal is another hair-brained project. Thal flood canal is the only fast track project for entirely different reason and hence the most controversial in Sindh.

We talk about education and do nothing about it. The budget for the next year provides a paltry sum of Rs5.7 billion for education. Development expenditure provides another Rs7.58 billion most of it, Rs6.44 billion, under commodities and services. This amount seems to have been allocated for purchase of computers etc., which in the absence of teachers and other facilities will rot without ever been brought to use.

The first commandment of Allah to His prophet was to read. It is an irony that we are almost unread and illiterate, except the Muslims who lived under the godless Soviets. The founder of the nation also emphasized the need for education. When someone told him that there was no money for schools and teachers he said go and find it. The question is where could you find the money, with so much preempted by the holy cows. The answer is right here. We have to have our priorities right. If we keep on talking of education and spending on defence all we get after 56 years of our independence is poverty, misery, wretchedness, lawlessness, unemployment, infant mortality, failing health, etc.