1. Uniform criterion not applied for comparison – at times, budget estimates for the outgoing fiscal year have been used; while at others revised estimates have been used.
2. Current expenditure and revenue estimates not realistic as evident from the outgoing fiscal year’s experience.
3. Enormous increase in budget deficit.
4. No incentives for the housing and construction sector, implying that unemployment will rise and the economic growth will remain slow.
5. Enormous increase in internal receipts, meaning more direct and indirect taxation.
6. Minimum wage for workers not raised.
7. Changes and discrepancies in budget heads to hide inefficiency.
8. The resource availability estimates are not realistic and appear to be an attempt to hide the actual budget deficit.
9. Defence spending increased to Rs545 billion from Rs495 billion despite the fact that pensions of armed forces personnel had been included in the civilian budget.
10. More reliance on external resources and bank borrowings.
11. Agricultural tax not imposed.
12. Wrong assumption that provinces will provide Rs80 billion to the federal government form their physical surplus.
13. Development budget of some important ministries, such as Information and Broadcasting, slashed.
14. Budget documents on uploaded on the Finance Division website.
15. A lot of ambiguities and unanswered questions.
Losing Ministries
1. Industries and Production Division: Allocation decreased to Rs774 million from Rs2.1 billion.
2. Revenue Division: Allocation decreased to Rs807 million from Rs1.97 billion.
3. Ports and Shipping Division: Allocation decreased to Rs325 million from Rs744 million.
4. Narcotics Control Division: Allocation decreased to Rs311 million from Rs534 million.
5. Establishment Division: Allocation decreased to Rs8 million from Rs34 million.
6. Information and Broadcasting Division: Allocation decreased to Rs412.3 million from Rs630 million.
7. Statistics Division: Allocation decreased to Rs140 million from Rs252 million.
