Enhanced role of parliamentarians in budget-making stressed

Experts agree on the efficacy and need of a pre-budget parliamentary session.

ISLAMABAD:

Parliamentarians and financial experts at a workshop sought greater role of elected representatives in budget-making and called for enhancing their technical capacity to understand budgetary documents.

They agreed upon the need for enhanced role of parliament in the budget making process. They said a pre-budget session should be held in march to get parliamentarians’ input before the budget is finalised.

The workshop was arranged by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) with the objective to assist standing committees in understanding and scrutinising budgets and demand for grants.

Committee chairs and members said that the technical understanding of parliament members needs to be enhanced through such forums.

Noman Ishtiaq, a public financial management specialist, said that parliamentary committees needed to review their ministries’ demands for grants by comparing those with each ministry/division’s goals and objectives presented for three years in the Medium-Term Budgetary Framework booklet.

He said the committees must review whether or not principles of good budgeting, such as fiscal discipline, strategic prioritisation and operational efficiency, were utilised in budget.

Giving a presentation on defense budget review methods, he stressed the importance of analysing the organisation’s policies and the services that it sought to provide in order to understand the budget’s requirements.

Citing the example of the ministry of petroleum, he explained how the committees could frame questions keeping in view factors such as the value for money and policy priority.

Member National Assembly (MNA) Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said there was an urgent need for all political parties to cooperate to find ways for revenue generation as the fiscal space available to the state was negligible. He emphasised the need for the parliament to play a greater role in budget making.

MNA Khurram Dastgir Khan, who is the chairperson of the standing committee on commerce, considered the practice of post-effect passage of supplementary budget to be, in effect, a black hole for corruption. He said a method requiring prior parliamentary approval and committee consent for the passage of supplementary budgets should be adopted.

In his opening remarks, Pildat Executive Director Ahmed Bilal Mehboob stressed the need for reforms in parliament and a more active role of committees in the budget process. He proposed the arrangement of a pre-budget parliamentary session in March, to be preceded by a fiscal overview by the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission. He said the time of the budget session needed to be increased and the budget should be sent to committees for review after its presentation in the house, before the beginning of debate in the house.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2011.