The opposition has often blamed the PTI for using the backdoor to come to power, blaming an “unseen” or “third” force. The PTI rubbishes the claim. For the first time in recent memory, cabinet members were not given a pay rise. Some would say that on the basis of performance, they should thank the stars they did not face a cut.
Jokes apart, the government has tried to demonstrate austerity, starting from home. However negligible the impact might be, on the overall picture. Signaling and leading from the front often carry more value. The expenditure related to running the civil government has been budgeted at 6 percent lower from FY19’s revised figure of Rs460 billion. Within it, salaries and allowance for civil servants, has gone down by half a percent.
The current expenditure account of the budget has historically contained six elements. This time around, it has two more. The names are “pay and pension” and “provision for contingencies”. Combined, these amount to Rs194 billion, or 3.5 percent of total tax revenue budgeted for the year. Now one wonders, where do these pays and pensions go? Both, civilian and military affairs have been separately provided for in the budget document.
Who are the “aliens” entitled to Rs79 billion of “pay and pension” outside civilian and defence expenditure? And what kind of contingencies have been provided for to the tune of Rs115 billion? Agreed that the new Minister for Science and Technology has made great strides in readying a moon sighting calendar, but do we now also have a natural calamity predictor? Great news, if true. Even then, who is the lucky lot likely to receive Rs79 billion as “pay and pension”?
The answer to that must come. Not that anyone doubts, but only for clarity sake. The usual trolls are pointing that Rs194 billion, if added to the defence budget, would result in an 18 percent increase, in line with historical increase. Little do they know that the armed forces, in an unprecedented move and a first, voluntarily decided to not ask for any increased allocation in the budget, which was appreciated widely
least so by the Prime Minister himself. The PM promised a high powered commission a midnight ago, to probe where all the money has evaporated. One wonders if this could also extend to the unexplained allocations for this budget.
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