Budget with a sanity deficit
At a time when Pakistan is going through some of the worst economic challenges in its chequered history, the federal government has come up with a budget that speaks volumes…
Burgeoning budget deficit
The information on fiscal operations in 2021-22 has just been released by the Ministry of Finance. These figures are based on information from the AGPR (Accountant General of Pakistan Revenue),…
Primary versus budget deficit
Setting time bound quantitative targets for primary deficit, defined as minus interest and repayment of principal as and when due, is a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) condition for Pakistan…
Whither the budget deficit
There was intense speculation on the government’s ability to meet the budget deficit target of 7.2 percent for the current fiscal year, the same as projected for 2018-19, agreed with…
Lower budget deficit in 2019-20
The information on fiscal operations in 2019-20 by the federal and provincial governments was released a few days ago. The very pleasant surprise is that the consolidated fiscal deficit has…
Runaway budget deficits
The last three years witnessed a steady decline in the consolidated budget deficit during the tenure of the IMF program. The deficit was 6.4% of the GDP in 2012-13, excluding…
Understating the budget deficit
The process of fiscal stabilization requires a big downward adjustment in the size of the consolidated budget deficit of the Federal and Provincial Governments. Therefore, it is of critical importance…
Out of control budget deficit
The information on Fiscal Operations in the first quarter of 2018-19 has been released recently by the Ministry of Finance (MOF). The consolidated fiscal deficit for the quarter is Rs…
Runaway budget deficit
The information on Fiscal Operations by the Federal and Provincial Governments for the first nine months of 2017-18 has been released recently by the Ministry of Finance (MoF). The bottom…
Infeasible financing of budget deficit
The last two articles by the author of this article in Business Recorder were on 'bloated revenue projections' and 'understated expenditure projections', with regard to the outcome in 2016-17 and the Federal…
