Opposition challenges legality of new budget

PTI and PPP has termed the budget as pointless for ignoring the people

ISLAMABAD : While rejecting the government’s claims about the country being in stable financial health, major opposition parties questioned on Friday the legality of the incumbent government presenting the next fiscal year’s budget.

Both Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf pointed out major flaws in the budget document, saying it had nothing to say about fast-dwindling foreign exchange reserves or swelling internal and external debt, adding that the budget would only benefit the rich and overburden the poor.

PPP asserted that it would try to block the passage of the budget in parliament.

“It is pointless to comment on the budget – an exercise that has no legal, moral and political basis – It seems (to be) driven solely by greed and political ambition,” said former president and PPP Co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari.



He said that the government had opted to present the budget despite the fact that three of the four federating units – Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and Baluchistan – had opposed the idea of presenting next year’s budget.

Zardari said that in view of the correct legal position, the PPP decided to present Sindh budget for the next three months and asked why the federal government insisted on presenting a budget for the entire year when it will no longer be in power after two months.

“Is it the temptation of Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) projects worth hundreds of billions of rupees, involving huge commissions?” he asked. Zardari warned that ignoring the provinces in the formulation of PSDP would only alienate them and undermine the federation.

PPP Information Secretary Dr Nafeesa Shah claimed it was illegal for the federal government to present a budget for the whole year, adding that it amounted to pre-poll rigging.

She said that government had tried to dupe the masses by painting a rosy picture of the national economy at a time when the rupee was facing unprecedented depreciation and forex reserves were depleting fast.

She said that the incumbent government’s bad economic policies would result in a disaster for the next government.

Pointing out that the gap in imports and exports was $13.8 billion in 2013 when the PML-N ascended to power, she said that this gap had widened to $27 billion in five years.



It demonstrated the extent of the government’s skewed financial policies.

She said that PPP’s parliamentary party would meet on Saturday (today) to chalk out a plan to block the budget in the National Assembly.

PTI’s shadow finance minister Asad Umar said that the government had failed to explain that how it would repay over Rs500 billion in circular debt and over Rs1 trillion of internal and external debt.

Terming the government claims about the fiscal deficit 'false', Umar said that the government had made the controversial tax amnesty scheme part of the budget document even though it had been rejected by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance.

“In simple words, Pakistan is…on the verge of financial collapse and is in need of another bailout package,” Umar said while commenting on the PML-N’s overall five-year performance on the economic front.

According to him, the government had misled the nation about power outages by claiming that the issue had been completely addressed.

On the other hand, he said, people in various parts of the country had to endure outages lasting several hours.

“Ignoring fair chances of bankruptcy, the government insisted on LNG, coal and energy products imports,” he said, adding that the new budget was without any relief for the common man.