Budgetary allocations for development are debated every year, but do we really care if the numbers presented by the governments mean anything beyond what they are: just numbers? In a post-budget dialogue, titled ‘Development or Delusion for Sindh’, organised by the Sindh Economic Forum (SEF) on Wednesday, notable speakers tried to answer the question.
Writer Mohsin Babbar highlighted the issue of, as he put it, “ghost development”. He said for him budget is all numbers, and there was no way to cross-check them or monitor the government’s performance against identifiable benchmarks.
He expressed frustration over Sindh government’s moves to shift the blame of tardy progress on the federal government. “The question is not just how much you received. It is more important to know what they did with resources they received,” he said. He contested the claim of Sindh that it received Rs80 billion less from the federal pool. “Budget documents reveal that the actual shortfall was Rs20bn.”
Mahmood Nawaz Shah urged the provincial government to release economic survey before budget. “The absence of data on the state of the economy has stifled the debate over the government’s incompetence,” he said.
