IN its last fiscal year before the elections, the Sindh chief minister, who also holds the portfolio for finance, has said that his government is serious about investing in education and has announced its largest hike in allocations, up by 24pc, for this sector. He justified the hike with these words: “If we are to prevail as a fair, just and emancipated people, we must invest heavily in our schools and especially our teachers.” Nobody will disagree with the sentiment behind these words, nor will anyone dispute the increased allocation. But it is still strange that in almost a decade of ruling the province, the PPP government has woken up to this responsibility only in the last year of its second term. And if the chief minister would like to claim that his government has been serious about education from the very beginning, he should show the people where the results are.

Fact of the matter is, the Sindh government has announced a very non-serious budget in its last year. It is laden with handouts, and contains no new revenue measures to help pay for them. Contrary to how provincial governments are supposed to operate, it is a deficit budget. The minister is right to complain that the federal government unjustly withholds the province’s share from the NFC award, but according to his own budget documents, in the current fiscal year, 97pc of budgeted federal transfers on revenue assignment were received by the province, meaning the shortfall he is complaining about is not so large as to be a headline item in his budget speech. What is more important for him to answer is why the pace of increase in direct taxes, particularly agriculture income taxes, has been so painfully slow, despite achieving what the provincial government claims to be complete computerisation of all landholdings in the province. The current chief minister has brought some vigour to the Sindh government, but unfortunately the budgeting priorities will not change.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2017