For a country suffering through a pandemic and whose economy is crashing, putting more money for defence seems illogical. But this is exactly what the Imran Khan government has proposed in a grim reminder of how much Islamabad’s priorities are misplaced.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government has proposed 11.9 per cent increase in the country’s defence budget.
The budget document shows that the defence outlay for 2020-21 would be Pakistani Rs 1,289 billion as compared to Pakistani Rs 1,152 billion earmarked for the ongoing fiscal year.
A closer look at the budget details revealed that Rs 1,289 billion figure does not include Pakistani Rs 369 billion allocated for pensions of retired military personnel and Pakistani Rs 324 billion for the armed forces development programme.
“The defence budget allocation shows roughly 12 per cent increase over last year’s figures. However, this is deceptive because invariably there is an increase midway and a lot of military expenditure is hidden under different heads. These include pensions, major acquisitions and the nuclear programme,” Tilak Devasher, member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) and author of several books on Pakistan said.
Devasher said: “As compared with the budgeted Rs 1.29 trillion defence expenditure, the size of the federal developmental budget is only Rs 650 billion. This shows the priorities of the government and the dominance of the military”.
The Economic Survey 2019-20 has revealed that the country is bracing towards a massive and widespread joblessness due to the lockdowns and restrictions, required to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
The survey has estimated a staggering number of 1.4 million to 18.53 million people going jobless in the country. It maintains that the ongoing restrictions and lockdowns due to coronavirus may see at least 2.2 per cent of the country’s employed workforce going jobless, while in case of a lockdown under limited restrictions, the numbers of joblessness in the country would hover around 1.4 million.
On the other hand, a complete lockdown would interpret to push at least 18.53 million people, which is about 30 per cent of the labour force to unemployment, which job losses worth at least PKR 315 billion.
There are reports that the Pakistan government has imposed at least PKR 200 billion worth of additional taxes, aimed at achieving PKR 4,963 trillion target.
Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar, while presenting the budget on June 12, claimed that no new taxes have been imposed.
However, according to the Finance Bill 2020, PKR 100,000 to PKR 200,000 luxury tax on land with covered area of over 1,000 sq, yards residential homes has been introduced while PKR 25 per square foot to PKR 80 per square foot on farm houses has been introduced.