Rs 599.4 billion supplementary grants for fiscal year 2018: government to seek ex post facto approval of Parliament

The government will seek ex post facto approval of the Parliament for Rs 599.4 billion supplementary grants for the financial year 2017-18. According to the budget documents placed before the Parliament on Friday, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail sought the appropriation of Rs 599.4 billion through regular supplementary grants. The Parliament is required to approve these expenditures because the amount is considered to have been already spent.
Supplementary demands for grants and appropriations 2017-18 reveal that the figure of Rs 599.4 billion in supplementary grants is about Rs 289 billion higher than last year's Rs 310.4 billion. Documents suggest that supplementary grants worth around Rs 184 billion were for re-appropriations - surrender from one grant to another.
In regular supplementary grants, Rs 62.3 billion were spent on servicing of foreign debt, Rs 143.2 billion on foreign loan repayment and Rs 6 billion on subsidies and miscellaneous expenditure, repayment of short-term foreign credits, Rs 53.7 billion, and Rs 149.7 billion were spent on other services.
In budget documents, it has been stated that regular supplementary grants are meant to provide funds for expenditure for purposes that were not foreseen at the time of finalization of demands for grants. Such supplementary grants put additional burden on the budget. Most of these supplementary grants are described as 'charged expenditure' out of the federal consolidated fund.
In some of the cases of supplementary demands for grants and appropriation 2017-18, an amount of Rs 1.5 billion was spent on the purchase of operational equipment and secret service expenditure. An amount of Rs 245 million was spent on purchase of vehicles for federal ministers and ministers for state. An additional Rs 150 million was spent on VVIP security vehicles. Prime Minister Office purchased four new vehicles worth Rs 20 million.
An amount of Rs 28 million was given to lawyers on account of international arbitration case against M/s Karkey (Turkish Power Company), Rs 117 million were spent on establishment of Power Division due to reorganization of federal secretariat and Rs 265 million for establishment of Petroleum Division.
Around Rs 4.3 billion were given to Director General Inter-Services Intelligence for accomplishment of a special assignment. Additional Rs 12.8 billion were spent under civil pension head and Rs 72 billion were spent under defense pension head to meet difference between budget estimates and revised estimated 2017-18.