ISLAMABAD, June 8: The former prime minister and PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto said the Budget 2005-06 would plunge Pakistan into worst trade deficit. In a statement issued by the PPP media cell here on Wednesday, she said the failure of the economic policies under the military dictatorship was evident from the fact that the country’s trade deficit would possibly plunge to $5 billion. This would be the biggest trade deficit in the history of Pakistan, she added.

Ms Bhutto pointed out that according to the Consumer Price Index, inflation is sky rocketing at the rate of 11.6 per cent far exceeding the inflation rates of every single civilian government. She said the inflation rate proved the PPP point that democracy and development went together while dictatorship and hardships were synonymous.

She said following the 9/11 events, remittances from Overseas Pakistanis increased in the last three years totalling $12 billion (averaging $4 billion per fiscal year). Despite this, the former premier said, no citizen-centric mega projects were mentioned in current budget.

“Instead the emphasis was on militarization and weaponization with defence expenditure growing astronomically especially when defence pensions are taken into account.”

She said in a country where people were committing suicide because they could not afford to live, defence budget had been increased (Rs7 billion at the cost of cutting down social sector programmes. Money has been reserved to buy new F-16s. She said this huge increase in defence expenditure was puzzling given that Islamabad has the nuclear bomb as ‘defence deterrence and relationship with neighbours are improving.

Ms Bhutto criticized the military regime‘s lack of any price control mechanism. Last year, under public pressure, refined and raw sugar, wheat (1.5 tons) and onions were imported from India as a short-term measures to control prices. This year budget does not address any price control strategy.

She said initial reports suggested that only half of the money devoted to social programmes or for development programmes in last year‘s budget was actually spent.

She said money allocated to social expenditure in last budget had been diverted to other uses, which remained unexplained.

Ms Bhutto said the military regime had torn into shreds the very notion of a budget, which was to document where money was to be spent. “In typical disinformation, the regime claimed last year to spend money on certain heads but did not do so.”

She said the country did not rely on the budget document this year due to the habit of the regime to make claims it could not fulfil or to make claims to silence critics only to covertly divert funds elsewhere.