Military regimes raised budget deficit, seminar told

"Military governments increased the budget deficit and the democratic government are left with no option but to clear the mess created by the military government". This was the view of economic analyst Dr A R Kamal, at a seminar on "A Critical Analysis of Budget 2007/08" organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here on Monday.
Central Information Secretary of PML (N) Ahsan Iqbal said, "there are two approaches to analyse the budge namely to discuss the numbers and to have an overview of its thematic part". While discussing its thematic aspect, he said, "it is 8th budget by General Musharraf and 5th budget of Shaukat Aziz as Finance Minister of Pakistan but no real solution has been offered to the chronic problems and the crisis of governance is increasingly posing a real challenge to the country".
"The existing situation of quality of life, poor delivery of services, worsening law and order, high unemployment and poverty rates have exposed the claims of General Musharraf's regime, he also questioned the achievements of 7-point agenda of General Musharraf".
He said, " 3-4 times increase in the prices of food items has been recorded since 1999. The government has accepted this bitter reality and its move to open 5000 Utility Stores across the country would not help it, as the problem of price hike is linked with economic policies. The increase in salaries by 15 percent cannot bring any change, as 75 percent of our population has become a prey to poverty, he added.
He said, in 1999 our democratic government allocated 2.2 percent of GNP for education and 0.8 percent for health, whereas the budget of 2007- 08 education and health sectors have got a share of 1 percent and 0.6 percent of GNP respectively.
The land under cultivation in 1999 was 23 million hectares, which is still the same. This means even an inch has not been added in this regard.
Similarly the growth of agriculture sector is nominal even after 7 years, as 21 million tonnes of wheat and 11 million bales of cotton were produced in 1999 as compared with 23 million tonnes of wheat and 13 million bales of cotton.
He contradicted the governments' claim that the high growth rate is a result of its better economic performance whereas it is the result of foreign aid, loans, remittances, privatisation, multilateral financial assistance programmes and above all the event of 9/11, which changed the face of Pakistani economy. But this window of opportunity has not been utilised and according to UN Human Development Index Pakistan still stood at 134th position with exceptionally low spending over social sectors.
Dr A R Kamal discussed in-depth the issues of transparency of budget, growth rate, its sustainability, trickle down effect of the growth rate, nature and sustainability of investment.
He said that there was an increase in the investment but the worrying aspect of it was that most of it went to telecommunication sector rather than industry and agriculture.
He said that sufficient and effective utilisation of funds is equally important than the volume of its allocation, under the SAP there was increase in allocation for education but no significant enrolment was recorded.