In a bizarre turn of events, National Assembly yesterday passed sums worth Rs. 599,400,612,000 under the head of “Supplementary Grants and Appropriations for the financial year 2017 – 18.” The Assembly approved the sums – despite being retrospective in nature(since the amounts have already been spent) – worth Rs. 260 billion for the repayment of foreign debt, Rs. 6.650 billion for the upcoming election, and passing more than Rs. 33.778 billion filed under the Miscellaneous Expenditure.
Some of the items unexplained and princely in nature were fait accompli in nature since the Assembly had no option to challenge but to approve the amounts as they have already been spent during the current fiscal year.
The list of items includes some bizarre expenditures including allowances of Prime Minister with amounts being spent on his publicity, health campaigns, and advertisements on 70th Anniversary of Pakistan.
Amounts exceeding Rs. 6.65 billion were also approved for the expenditure on the conduction of next elections.
Furthermore, additional sums worth Rs. 17 billion were also approved which were allocated for subsidies granted in the incumbent year.
To the cost of the taxpayers, amount exceeding allocated sums in previous budget, worth Rs. 86 billion was also approved by the Assembly under the head for defense pensions worth Rs. 73 billion and civil pensions worth Rs. 13 billion during the outgoing fiscal year.
The government despite its claims to run the government effectively and efficiently exceeded its budgeted expenditures in the outgoing fiscal year. This in turn will feed to the budget deficit that is already ballooning to alarming levels and consequently eat into the savings of middle class tax payers.
