The ruling party’s decision to postpone the federal cabinet’s approval that would have tabled the mini-budget of about Rs360 billion comes as a surprise. The mini-budget is part of the prior actions needed for the country to get IMF’s approval for the revival of its $6 billion programme. The session of the parliament in which the government was to present the budget had already been postponed from December 13 to 22nd in the wake of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference on Afghanistan that was held this Sunday. The cabinet meeting on Wednesday was going to table the mini-budget as well as the State Bank of Pakistan Amendment Bill, 2021, for approval but has been delayed for an unknown period of time. This will inevitably delay the revival of the programme. It must be noted that the country is already faced with a resource crunch and had been vying for the revival to curtail the continuous current account deficit and the declining rupee against the dollar, among other things.
The government’s decision comes a day after it faced a setback in the first phase of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) local body polls. The JUI-F won majority votes, whereas the PTI couldn’t even secure the mayoral seat in Peshawar. The PTI MNAs believe the rising inflation is the reason behind losing its ‘loyal’ voters. The fact is that the approval of the budget would have slapped the highly inflationary Rs360 billion in indirect taxes on the people already struggling to make ends meet.
But is delaying the budget going to help the PTI? The IMF is in no mood to budge to government’s demands and has made it clear that the prior actions need to be met. It is then safe to assume that the government will approve the budget. There is also no certainty to the idea that delaying it until the second phase would ensure the PTI getting a major share in K-P, what then the delay is going to achieve is anybody’s guess. The ruling party needs to do some serious soul-searching because its poor economic policies are not the only reasons for its lacklustre performance in K-P LG elections – nepotism, lack of vision of the party and its inability to deliver on its electoral promises have also affected its vote bank. Delaying tactics are not going to help the PTI in the second phase nor the upcoming general elections. Better policies will.
