In oblivion: ‘Parliament’s panel clueless about budgets’

P&D ministry unable to make proposals due to lack of budget info.

ISLAMABAD:

In a clear violation of rules, the federal government has not notified the indicative size of the next financial year’s development budget to parliamentary committees, undermining the supremacy of parliament and indicating how strong a grip bureaucrats have over the budget-making process.

The finance ministry have not indicated the size of next year’s development budget to any federal ministry, said Asif Sheikh, the planning and development (P&D) ministry adviser on the development budget. He was speaking at a forum of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Reforms in Islamabad on Tuesday.

The meeting of the committee had been convened to discuss the development budget proposals of the ministry for the financial year 2014-2015, which will begin from July this year.

In June last year, the National Assembly had unanimously amended its Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business to empower standing committees to scrutinise the budget before presenting it in the house.

Interestingly, the amendment had been moved by Anusha Rehman Khan, who is now minister of state for information technology in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet.

According to the new rules, each standing committee will recommend public-sector development programme (PSDP) for the next financial year for its respective ministry, which will then submit its budgetary proposals to the relevant standing committee no later than January 31 of the preceding financial year.

Thereon, the standing committee will make recommendations by March 1 of the preceding financial year.

Due to the tight control of the finance ministry over fiscal affairs, the ministries remain in the dark about the size of the development budget. “Even the planning ministry does not know what size will the development budget for the next year be and we are unable to formulate budget proposals,” said Sheikh.

For the current fiscal year 2013-2014, parliament had approved a Rs540 billion development budget. However, during the first half of the fiscal year, the government released only Rs120 billion or 22% of the annual budget.

Without explicitly stating that the PML-N government has cut the development budget, Sheikh said this year it was Rs425 billion. The amount is Rs115 billion, or 21% less than the budget approved by the Parliament.

Sheikh’s contract as adviser to the ministry will expire next month. It is not clear whether the government will extend his term or not, as it has already announced to lay off all federal government employees hired on contracts during the previous Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) regime.  Also speaking at the forum, PPP’s Dr Nafisa Shah, who is also a member of the standing committee, alleged the government was flouting the rules and said her party will take up the issue at the floor of the National Assembly.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2014.