ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has been very vocal in its criticism of the federal budget, and while the party chief described the budget as a tool to strengthen ‘Punjabistan’, the economic managers of his party foresaw a Greece-like situation developing in Pakistan.

“Seems this budget has been designed to break the federation. We reject one unit budget for Punjab­istan,” PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari tweeted on Tuesday.

While he may not have been able to pack too much nuance into 140 characters, his party’s financial wizards feared that Pakistan could become the next Greece in ten years if the current government continued its figure-fudging, kept burdening the exchequer with heavy loans, remained biased towards Punjab and kept encroaching on the rights of provinces.

Speaking at a press conference at Sindh House on Tuesday, Senator Saleem Mandviwalla and the PPP economic team said the budget for 2016-17 reflected the attitude of the centre threatening the federation.

He decried the government’s bias towards Punjab, saying that more than Rs600 billion in PSDP projects were being allocated to one province only, asking, “what do you expect the smaller provinces to do, eat the air?”

The economy was heading for a disaster because it was based on false and incorrect information, he alleged. “Recently, the UN resident director asked me ‘When will you stop this figure fudging?’ His statement was not directed towards me, but the whole parliament,” Senator Mandviwalla said.

He said that no policy could be successful without sound foundations and a realistic picture.

He also said the budget was designed deliberately to pose a threat to the federation, as there were several encroachments on the rights of the provinces.

“Earlier, the federal government tried to take the right of collecting GST on services from the provinces, but this time they have tried to snatch the right to collect property tax,” he said.

Both he and former petroleum minister Syed Naveed Qamar called the budget ‘direction-less’, saying it seemed to have no economic vision, long-term policy goals or strategies to improve tax compliance, reduce tax evasion and provide relief to honest taxpayers.

“There is a need to present the true picture of the situation; they are building the PSDP on loans, even salaries are being given from loans,” Senator Mandviwalla added.

Mr Qamar claimed that the figure-fudging and heavy borrowing was a targeted policy of the finance minister to impress the IMF. “His only target is to show the IMF good numbers.”

He said that Mr Dar was so obsessed with numbers that he resorted to criticising the agriculture sector for spoiling their overall numbers. “He should have shown concern about the farmers, not the figures that his failed economy could not achieve,” he said, adding that the IMF was fully controlling the Pakistani economy now.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2016