IT might be one of the most consequential budgets passed by any government in recent times, yet it is surprising to see how little of its most important aspects have been discussed. The budget is built around a massive hike in revenues and an accompanying need to keep current expenditures in check, with the express purpose of bringing down the primary deficit as per the preconditions set by the International Monetary Fund. Many of the projections in the budget are surprising, such as the overall fiscal deficit remaining elevated at 7.1pc of GDP, only slightly below the level in fiscal year 2019, while inflation is projected to rise to almost 13pc and GDP growth to slow to 2.4pc by the end of this fiscal year. Those who understand would know that something stunning is being described in these numbers. The numbers talk of rising inflation and unemployment and a government struggling hard to do everything in its power to meet its obligations to its creditors. Yet very little of this emerging situation was discussed during the budget debate, where the most highlighted portion of the exchange centred on the speaker’s ruling disallowing the use of the words “selected prime minister” in the course of the proceedings.

The tax plan also deserved in-depth discussion. A closer look shows that the burden of the incremental revenues for the year disproportionately falls on salaried people, and is followed by a vigorous attempt to net undisclosed incomes of industrialists and small and medium enterprises, and to document trader incomes. All this is fine and necessary. Tax evasion and undocumented businesses have become a way of life in this country, and the FBR chairman’s repeated insistence that somewhere around 30pc of all bank accounts are, in fact, benami accounts may well be true. But the wisdom of doing all this in one go, on the back of a vigorous and muscular implementation strategy that seeks to intimidate people into compliance more than anything else, deserved a thorough debate in parliament. Traders and business people understandably felt that parliament and the opposition parties were too busy with their own issues to be responsive to the genuine concerns of their constituents.

Those concerns revolve around jobs, cost of living, ease of doing business and harassment by government officers, to name a few. This budget and its accompanying finance bill are about to aggravate all these issues simultaneously. The wheels that are ready to be set into motion are larger and more menacing than anything we have seen in well over a decade. That is what makes the budget so significant, yet it sailed through parliament with hardly any imprint being left by the opposition. Let’s hope politics is not becoming irrelevant to the real-life concerns of the very people it is supposed to serve.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2019