TO get an idea of where the most recently announced budget is likely to end up, one should take note of the request for supplementary grants that the government has tabled before parliament. The request asks for an additional Rs310.5bn to meet expenditure overruns under various heads, which is 19pc higher than what was requested last year. Given the tighter controls on current expenditures that the latest budget is attempting, it is likely that next year’s request will be higher still. Supplementary budget requests are designed “to provide for expenditure for purposes that were not foreseen at the time of finalisation”, according to budget documents, and the larger the amount, the greater the margin by which the government failed to foresee actual expenses. In some cases, the request is fulfilled through what is known as ‘reappropriation’ in the parlance of public finance, meaning it is money taken away from one head and given to another, so its overall impact on the budget is neutral. But in the latest instance, at the close of the current fiscal year, the government is asking parliament to essentially rubber-stamp additional expenditures of Rs125bn that go beyond simple reappropriations, and that have an actual fiscal impact.

Supplementary budgets, known previously as ‘mini budgets’ were a normal part of fiscal management in Pakistan until the IMF put an end to the practice — to some extent in any case. Now they show up mostly towards the end of the fiscal year, and the size of the supplemental request is a proxy indicator of how sound fiscal management has been. In this case, we can see an upward trajectory in the amount being asked for year after year. For the next fiscal year, all indications point towards an even bigger spike. This shows that budgets are now being made on increasingly optimistic assumptions, and the government is struggling to keep pace.

What adds to the irony is the fact that many of the heads that recorded expenditure overruns sound frivolous. The Press Information Department, tasked with dealing with the media, spent 900pc more than it was allocated. One wonders where all that money is going. Likewise, purchases of luxury vehicles and glittering new office space, complete with conference rooms, for Prime Minister House also recorded extra-budgetary expenses. It is time to bring these expenditures under control, or at least make it incumbent on the government to ask for additional resources once a department has overshot its allocation, as opposed to the current practice where the rulers undertake the expenditure and parliament is left to rubber-stamp its approval. Executive power indeed belongs to those in power, but it is important that it be exercised with due oversight by parliament.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2017