LAHORE: A senior Pakistan People’s Party official in Punjab on Thursday called on the federal government to place inflation relief at the heart of the upcoming national budget, presenting a five-point economic reform package and warning that macroeconomic stabilisation had failed to ease the daily hardships faced by ordinary citizens.
Rao Babar Jamil, economic advisor to PPP Punjab President Raja Pervez Ashraf, made the appeal at a press briefing in Lahore, where he also urged Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to redirect provincial spending away from large infrastructure projects and toward public health and education.
“The common man in Pakistan is suffering enormously,” Jamil said. “When a family cannot afford to buy flour, cooking oil, or basic medicines, all talk of economic growth becomes meaningless.”
While acknowledging that the PML-N-led federal government had made measurable progress in bringing down headline inflation from recent historic highs, Jamil argued that the gains had not reached household level. “Stabilisation on paper is not the same as relief on the ground,” he said. “The upcoming budget is a critical opportunity to address these structural issues head-on.”
Jamil’s proposals target energy pricing, food subsidies, wages, social protection, and monetary policy.
On energy, he called for immediate reductions in fuel and electricity tariffs for lower and middle-income consumers, saying that electricity bills had become “a source of despair for millions of families.”
On food security, he demanded the revival of the Utility Stores Corporation, the network of subsidised retail outlets dismantled by the current government, and urged a transparent distribution system for essential staples including flour, sugar, pulses, and cooking oil. “If the government believed corruption had plagued the programme, it should have introduced reforms, not shut it down entirely,” he said. “Closure is not a solution. It is an abdication of responsibility.”
On wages, Jamil called for increases in both government salaries and the private sector minimum wage, describing the current statutory floor as incompatible with basic living costs. On social protection, he proposed higher monthly stipends under the Benazir Income Support Programme and an expanded beneficiary base, with priority access for women-headed households.
On monetary policy, he urged closer coordination between the government and the State Bank of Pakistan to lower borrowing costs, warning that high interest rates were cutting off small and medium enterprises from affordable credit.
Turning to the provincial government, Jamil acknowledged Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz’s political energy and public profile but challenged her administration’s budget priorities. He described a widening gap between investment in urban infrastructure and the deteriorating condition of schools and hospitals in rural and underserved parts of Punjab.
“Roads, bridges, and urban development have their place,” he said. “But a government’s first duty is to the welfare of its people, and that welfare is built on two pillars above all others: health and education.”
Jamil cited shortages of teachers, crumbling school buildings, understaffed hospitals, and inadequate medicine supplies across the province’s 36 districts. He called for targeted investment in the rehabilitation of government schools, recruitment and training of qualified teachers, upgrading of Basic Health Units, and reliable medicines procurement for public hospitals.
He also called for an emergency maternal and child health programme in underserved areas, noting that Punjab’s mortality rates in both categories remained unacceptably high, and for the revival of adult literacy initiatives targeting rural women.
Jamil was careful to frame his demands as a question of balance rather than opposition to development. “We are not asking the government to stop building roads,” he said. “We are asking it to ensure that before it constructs another underpass in a major city, it has first made sure that every child in Punjab has a functioning classroom and every sick person has a doctor they can reach.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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