Islamabad:
The International Monetary Fund has asked Pakistan to spend money on parliamentarians’ projects through regular approval processes by abandoning special treatment and again asked to avoid budgetary mid-year budget adjustments without prior approval from Parliament.
The IMF also stressed the importance of a budget strategy document by recommending its publication six months before the presentation of the budget in a decision contrary to the practice of the Ministry of Finance not to publish strategy documents in a timely manner.
To improve transparency, the efficiency and affordability of the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP), it is necessary to integrate the projects of parliamentarians in the PSDP process, the IMF said in its evaluation of the diagnosis of governance and corruption.
The government is supposed to officially publish the report by the end of this month.
Unlike the approval of any project by the Central Development Working Party or the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, parliamentarians’ programs are approved by a program to carry out the SDGs on SDGs without too much exam. Vice-Prime Minister Ishaq Dar chairs the steering committee.
These are small-scale regimes of community well-being, which also fall under the field of local governments with the exception of the supply of electricity and gas.
During the last financial year, the government had spent at least 61 billion rupees on parliamentarians’ diets and 70 billion rupees were allocated for the current exercise for these small -scale projects. There have also been voices inside the country against the expenses of these regimes outside the PSDP, which can cause waste and less expenses on the ground than approved budgets.
The IMF has also recommended to limit PSDP allowances to new projects to only 10% of total allowances in order to avoid thinning the already sacred resources. There is a tendency to each government to announce and approve new projects despite the fact that existing projects require more than a decade of completion due to limited resources.
The IMF has asked the Ministry of Planning to rationalize the PSDP portfolio by keeping only high priority projects. The political opportunity has distorted PSDP allowances and the federal government spent on projects, which are in the fields which are not even the responsibility of the center.
The government has also managed small regimes via the PSDP and the funds allocated to these projects are also often poorly used. The Ministry of Planning did not comment on this article.
The overall management of public finances of Pakistan remains weak and there is also a little appetite in the government to ensure transparency and involve the cabinet and parliament in the discussions before the budget.
This year’s Ministry of Finance did not take the budget strategy document to the federal office for its approval in violation of a law of the Parliament.
However, the IMF has recommended that the Ministry of Finance advance the presentation and publication calendar of the budget strategy document in January and include macroeconomic and tax indicators in these articles. The budget is presented in June.
The world lender also recommended that the government also analyze the accuracy of previous macroeconomic forecasts and budgetary estimates after the end of the fiscal year.
The IMF, which has long urged Islamabad to abandon the additional subsidy tool, again asked the government to respect the supremacy of parliament. He recommended that the government avoid budgetary adjustments in the middle of the year without obtaining the prior approval of the Parliament. In order to respect unexpected expenses such as natural disasters, the IMF has recommended maintaining an emergency pool for such expenses.
Currently, the government issues additional subsidies during the financial year and obtaining the approval of the ex-postman the expenditure of the Parliament. Sometimes there are unforeseen expenses such as the allowance of 5.8 billion rupees for the areas affected by the country’s floods on Tuesday.
But there was also a practice to postpone certain expenses at the time of the budget approval to maintain the overall size limited to the IMF requirement.
For example, the Ministry of Finance has not approved a subsidy for the regime for sending foreign funds to the budget due to an available limited space. However, after the intervention of the Prime Minister’s office, he authorized an additional grant of 30 billion rupes a few days ago in the emergency spending basin.
The exercise has just started and the government has already started the process of concession of additional subsidies to various ministries.
The economic coordination committee approved on Tuesday an additional grant of 250 million rupees for the national security division for its strategic planning unit. The expenses of setting up the cell should have been part of the regular budget approved in June.
The ECC Tuesday, on a proposal from the Finance Division, also approved the subsidy for personal payments based on the Raast QR code up to 3.5 billion rupees.
In another important recommendation, the IMF proposed to modify the law and the rules of the law and the rules of the regulatory authority for public procurement to put an end to preference in the markets for public entities and charitable organizations. He urged the government to make these changes to ensure transparency, efficiency and responsibility in the public procurement process.
