There is nothing extraordinary about the Budget measures. Some people like it, most do not. Some people will become richer, most poorer. The rich already know what’s in it for them; the poor don’t need to know, they can feel the crushing burdens of everyday life in their bones.
What is extraordinary, however, about the Budget is that it totally lacks in credibility and authenticity. Rich or poor, no one believes w word or statistic dished out by the Honourable Finance Minister. Why is that?
It is absolutely unprecedented for a Budget to be “leaked” before it is presented to parliament. But there is exactly what happened this year. The Muslim’s Budget “scoop” on the morning of May 14 is remarkable only because it strips the government of all credibility in formulating and presenting its package. After such a damning fiasco, no government would cling to power anywhere in the world. At the very least, the Budget would be scrapped and the Finance Minister would resign.
Instead, with the straightest face in town, the Honourable Mr Sartaj Aziz presented revised estimates of tax revenues and the Annual Development Plan to a confused press corps the day after the Budget. Overnight, the expected tax yields had shot up by nearly Rs 2 billion and the ADP had plummeted by Rs 6.5 million! In the next 24 hours, the excise duty on cotton announced earlier was hastily withdrawn. (It seems APTMA rushed to Islamabad and leaned on the government).
Without going into the economic logic or wisdom of such revisions, these events suggest an opportunistic propensity in government to yield to certain pressure groups and a cavalier attitude to budget-making which is frightening.
Fiddling the statistics to distort reality has progressively become something of an art with Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government. Last year, in the 91-92 budget, Mr Aziz said the fiscal deficit during 90-91 was 5.8 per cent of GDP and that his budgetary proposals for 91-92 were based on this figure. Three months later, when the Statistical Supplement to the Economic Survey 1990-91 was published, revised estimates on page 160 confirmed the 90-91 deficit at 5.8 per cent of GDP. Now the Economic Survey 91-92 tells us on page xvi that the 90-91 deficit was in fact 8.8 per cent of GDP! (In real terms, the 3 per cent difference amounts to over Rs 30 billion). It is remarkable that three months after presenting the 91-92 budget, when all the figures had undoubtedly come in, the finance minister was reluctant to reveal the true extent of the fiscal deficit in 90-91 and to revise its 91-92 budgetary assumptions accordingly.
Has such an unbelievable exercise been carried out again this year? The Economic Survey’s Statistical Supplement 90-91 also informs us that the 91-92 Budget had estimated the fiscal deficit for the year ahead at 5 per cent of GDP. Yet, according to Mr Aziz’s brief to the press two days before the May 14, 1992 Budget, the deficit in 1991-2 was 6.1 per cent. (Actually, if you calculate the figures, it comes to nearly 6.5 per cent). What are we to make of this? That in 1993 we will be told the deficit in 1992 was not 6.5 per cent but 9 per cent?
The worst is yet to come. On May 12, Mr Aziz told us he expected the 1992-3 deficit to be about Rs 72 billion. The budget he presented two days later says it will be Rs 89 billion. What will the government in power in 1993 tell us? That it was about Rs 110 billion? If you add the expected borrowings of autonomous federal corporations like WAPDA, PTC, etc, the real deficit would be even higher.
“The Budget-At-A-Glance” doesn’t tell us at a glance how Mr Aziz has arrived at this fiscal deficit. Nowhere can we find a small table showing Total Expected Revenues minus Total Expected Expenditure to yield the true fiscal deficit. Nor are details of how the deficit is to be met from different forms of borrowings given anywhere in intelligible form. Unless you have a pen, paper, calculator and a degree in Economics, you cannot begin to imagine the true picture!
What can we conclude? Either that the finance ministry is grossly inefficient and hasn’t done its homework or that the government is deliberately concealing facts by juggling figures. Which is it?
Bitter experience at the hands of Islamabad inclines us to believe the latter explanation. Hundreds of thousands of people have been cheated of their life’s savings of over Rs 20 billion at the hands of the IJI Coops. And the prime minister’s promise to redeem their losses has evaporated into thin air. The government made a huge fanfare of “self-reliance”, yet it is shamelessly begging for more foreign assistance. Only recently, the prime minister shed crocodile tears over the state of the economy, yet we are being constantly deluged by vision of paradise under his government. And so on.
This government is besieged by a crisis of no-confidence. Are we not within our rights, hen, to ask why it continues to govern us?