Presenting the annual budget in the National Assembly at around 5PM on a Saturday does not make any economic sense. The argument that the timing of making the budgetary proposals public is dictated by the need to render it impossible for the hoarders and black marketeers to make a killing with insiders’ information is totally absurd. And even if this argument was valid say until about two or three decades ago, it no more holds any water.

In this age of internet when information even about wars is being transmitted across the globe in real time, to think that you can deny the unscrupulous an opportunity to put the information to profitable use because you put in his way the barriers of the night or a closed holiday is wrong. There was, indeed, a time when the government used to control prices of almost everything and it was necessary to keep the matter a secret until the changes in prices became officially effective. But this is no more applicable today. Even prices and tariffs of such essential things like oil and utilities are no more dependent on annual budgets. They are increased whenever the prices of their imported inputs go up in the international markets.

In any case, since 1982 when we started going to the IMF for emergency help and accepting their conditionalities, the specific contours of the about-to-be-announced annual budgets including the broad outlines of taxation and expenditure proposals in great detail have been available to those who had any profitable interest in the fore knowledge of such things. Besides, the lobbyists of big business which keep crawling the lanes and by-lanes of the capital all through the year purchasing information can hardly be expected to remain ignorant of the budgetary proposals just because the CBR personnel are kept under lock and key in their offices for the last one week or so leading to the finalization of the budget or because it is announced after office hours on a week-end. On a couple of occasions in the past,even some of the enterprizing newspapers have managed to publish almost the entire budgetary proposals at least 24 hours before the D-day.

The argument that since it has to be approved by the cabinet after a threadbare discussion on it which normally takes most of the day necessitating at times last minute changes, it was only appropriate to announce it late in the afternoon. But then such a cabinet meeting could be held a little earlier in the day or it can be held a day before in the evening and changes made with ample time to go over them. And since the ministers are already under oath not to divulge the cabinet proceedings they would be expected to abide by it if there are any secrets in the budgetary proposals.

If all the arguments in defence of announcing the budget after 5PM on a week-end appear rather invalid then why should we continue to adhere to such a practice? One anecdote has it that it was during the British Raj that this practice of announcing the Indian budget at 5PM on a Saturday was adopted so that the rulers in London could receive it at a time suitably convenient for them, that is around mid-day. If this is so and it is only a colonial legacy, then it is high time that we gave it up.

The ideal day and time for announcing the budget one would like to believe is Monday at around 11 AM. The budget should then be immediately passed on to various committees of the National Assembly for closer scrutiny with the house itself going into a month-long recess. The general debate on the budget should start only after the resumption of the budget session following the end of the recess period. This will save the house from being subjected to usually ill-informed, non-serious debate on such a serious legislative piece.

Governments normally take at least about six months to put together their annual budgets. To expect members of the NA to express a well-informed and educated opinion on these proposals within a week of their announcement reduces the whole exercise of budget debate into a farce. Even party positions on the budget do not become clear during these debates. By the time it meanders to its logical end a budget debate normally becomes largely repetitive, boring and monotonous. Even those points which should have been spotlighted in favour or against the proposals get lost in the unnecessary verbiage.

The membership of the NA has expanded from 217 to 342. So, the number of speakers participating in the debate on the forthcoming budget would also naturally go up pro rata. And if it is not conducted in an orderly fashion with the objective of making the debate really meaningful, the NA is more likely to degenerate into a tower of Babel within no time.

The government is taking a lot of pride in what it calls its achievements on the economic front in the last three years. And it has many firsts to show for these achievements. For the first time Pakistan has been able to accumulate more than 10 billion dollars of unencumbered dollars in foreign exchange reserves. The interest rates are at an all time low.

The inflation too has remained within 4 per cent over the last one year. Both the revenue income and export earnings are showing signs of vitality with both expected to surpass growth rates of 15 per cent each by the end of the year. At the same time, both agriculture production as well as large scale manufacturing too seem to be on the mend with the latter perhaps reaching nearly 7 per cent during the year. Budgetary deficit is also at an all time low.

With so many positives going for the economy, the government should,therefore, have no reservations about presenting the next year’s budget in broad daylight, say at about 10-11 AM when the entire nation is awake and alert. And it should also have no qualms against providing the members of the NA a reasonable time of, say, at least four weeks to study the budget in depth before participating in a debate on the proposed measures and suggest changes.