ALTHOUGH an intense public debate had been going on about the contents and quality of the recently passed federal budget, there has not been much discussion on the deeply flawed process of its passage, with little to no value added to the document in parliament.

The little respect accorded to the budget has been highlighted this year more than at any other time in Pakistan’s parliamentary history, although the practice of overspending and shifting allocations from one head to another after the passage of the budget has been the norm since the 1973 Constitution was enacted. This year, the overspending of the previous two financial years reached a record high, as appropriately highlighted in a front-page story in this newspaper on July 8, 2024. According to the newspaper report, the National Assembly passed Rs9.4 trillion in expenditure overruns, an amount five times higher than the one approved last year.

The expenditure overruns are post-facto presented before the National Assembly in the form of the supplementary budget; the National Assembly routinely approves them with little or no debate because members consider such debate futile in the face of expenditure already incurred. For example, this year, the House did not even debate the supplementary and excess budget and not a single cut motion was moved on any supplementary or excess budget. As a result, the supplementary and excess demands for grants for FYs 2022-23 and 2023-24 were approved without any discussion.

These major, far-reaching, post-approval changes in the budget are made by the executive using Article 84 in the case of the federal budget, and Article 124 for the provincial budgets. The powers granted to the executive through these articles make the parliamentary budget process and approval a meaningless exercise.

The little respect accorded to the budget was highlighted this year more than previously.

Pakistan and Bangladesh seem to be the only two countries in the world which allow this kind of discretion to the executive to modify the budget approved by parliament in almost any way it likes. What is worse, parliament is not even informed at the time of making modifications to the approved budget, let alone seeking its prior consent. All changes made in the budget are collectively presented in the National Assembly at the end of the financial year, along with the budget for the next year.

In order to respect the sanctity of parliamentary approval, it is important that parliament revisit Articles 84 and 124 of the Constitution. To begin with, there is no justification for the executive to incur excess amounts and alter the budget in any manner once parliament has accorded its approval after the debate. Even if there is an emergency and modifications to the budget become unavoidable, it is not difficult in this day and age of modern communication and transport to call an emergency session of the National Assembly to consider the proposed modifications and give prior approval if deemed fit. Seeking prior emergency approval from the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue may be another option if convening of a parliamentary session is not possible for any reason.

The Danish parliament gave this power to its finance committee; one can assess the suitability of adopting such a measure in Pakistan, but it should be absolutely unacceptable in a democracy to allow the executive to amend the budget after it has been approved by parliament. It is rather unfortunate that our honourable parliamentarians seldom raise objections to this blatant breach of parliamentary privilege. As a matter of fact, amending the Constitution to establish parliamentary supremacy in budgetary matters should be a bipartisan concern.

The National Assembly passed two amendments to Rule 201 in its Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in 2013 and 2016. According to one amendment, which added sub-rule 201(6), each federal ministry was bound to share the proposals regarding the Public Sector Development Programme of the ministry with the concerned standing committee by Jan 31 each year, ahead of the finalisation of PSDP proposals. Each standing committee, according to the new rule, was supposed to scrutinise the proposals and send recommendations to the concerned ministry/ division for consideration and inclusion in the PSDP by March 1 each year.

The second amendment was made by adding sub-rule 201(7) in 2016, which obligated the concerned ministries to submit a compliance report to the concerned standing committees within 30 days of the submission of recommendations. It also required each ministry to show reasons in case the committee recommendations were not included in the federal budget.

Because of the dissolution of the National Assembly and the subsequent non-existence of the National Assembly standing committees in January, the PSDP proposals could not be sent to the standing committees this year. However, the status of implementation of Rules 201(6) and (7) during the past 10 years from 2014 to 2023 is extremely disappointing.

According to the data obtained from the National Assembly Secretariat, the National Assembly standing committees, whose number fluctuated between 26 and 29 in different years, forwarded a total of 202 recommendations to the respective ministries during the past 10 years, but not a single recommendation was accepted by any ministry! What is even worse, none of the ministries cared to convey the reasons for non-inclusion of the recommendations in the budget, in total disregard of National Assembly Rule 201(7)(b).

These two case studies clearly manifest parliament’s extremely weak role in the budget process. Can some party or, preferably, a bipartisan group of MNAs raise this alarming matter in the National Assembly with the objective of giving a meaningful role to parliament in the budget process?

The writer is the president of Pakistan-based think tank, Pildat.

X: @ABMPildat

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2024