Where does the axe fall? Sindh loses focus in budget

Govt misses allocations for safe drinking water, public transportation.

KARACHI:

Every year, different segments of the society wait for the annual budget with hopes and fears. After the 18th Constitutional Amendment and the 7th NFC Award, the importance of provincial budgets has increased and consequently the expectations from these budgets have also enhanced.

In this context, the people of Sindh in general and residents of Karachi in particular expected concrete measures in the budget for the delivery of safe drinking water, a much better public transportation system and an improved law and order situation.



The budget 2015-2016 portrayed a mixed pattern. There is hardly any focus on safe drinking water since the K-IV project received an allocation for Rs2.5 billion as per the budget speech. Similarly, there are also indications of five Bus Rapid Transit and two Metro Rail Transit projects.

Let us hope that these allocations do not suffer the same fate as the Karachi Circular Railways, which was announced in the budget speech in 2013 but the subsequent allocations in the corresponding budget were never made. If the government has, in fact, shown actual allocations for these projects in the budget documents then it is commendable but a cursory glance at the numbers indicate otherwise.



Public order and safety remains among the top non-development budget priorities with an allocation of roughly Rs80 billion for 2015-2016, which is 20 per cent higher compared to allocations for 2014-2015.

A comparison of revised and budgeted expenditure of 2014-2015 indicates that the axe has fallen on development expenditure, which declined by more than 28 per cent. In contrast, revised estimates of non-development exceeded budgeted expenditure by more than Rs18 billion.

Within non-development expenditures environment protection, housing and community amenities, education, and social protection declined by 40 per cent, 20 per cent, six per cent and two per cent, respectively.  However, education is still the top priority in the non-development budget for 2015-2016 and has an allocated share of more than 28 per cent.

Among the other non-development priorities, general public services, public order and safety affairs, economic affairs and health are consistently the top priorities of the Government of Sindh, which are reinforced in the budget with an allocated share of 25.8 per cent, 15.8 per cent, 15.5 per cent and 10.7 per cent, respectively. Rest of the four expenditure categories have less than four per cent share in total non-development allocations.



The break-up of the development expenditures indicates that out of an allocation of Rs213.6 billion for the year 2015-2016, the provincial contribution is Rs177 billion. Social protection (including district development budget), economic affairs, general public service, education and health are the top five development priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.

Interestingly, a comparison of development priorities of the outgoing fiscal year with the upcoming one shows that more than one-third of the annual development programme (ADP) has consistently been assigned to social protection. However, the revised estimate shows a decline of Rs35 billion or 46 per cent of the allocated amount in this head. In contrast, spending on economic affairs increased by Rs14 billion.



Among social sector development, both education and health sectors have been allocated a consistently low share of less than eight per cent in the ADP.  Both have more than Rs12 billion allocations for 2015-2016 but do not rank among the top priority sectors in the ADP of Rs177 billion.

The writer is a principal economist with the Social Policy and Development Centre

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2015.