Pakistan’s economy sees record high fiscal deficit

Date :29-Aug-2019

ISLAMABAD :

PAKISTAN’S economy is plunging into a deep crisis, even as its Prime Minister and all other leaders are preoccupied with issuing threats of war and jihad against India after the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistan Ministry of Finance released details of fiscal operations on Tuesday which show the frightening situation that the Pakistan economy is in.

The first year of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Government has concluded with a record 8.9 per cent fiscal deficit -- perhaps the highest in the country’s history -- as revenues plummeted while expenditures remained at the same level they were the previous year, when expressed as a percentage of GDP. In absolute terms, however, expenditures broke previous records while revenues were stagnant, ‘Dawn News’ reported. All major fiscal indicators showed deterioration over the outgoing fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2019. The numbers show that whatever efforts were made to control a blow-out on expenditures ended in grief, even though sharp revenue shortfalls had begun to surface much earlier in the first three quarters of the year. Much of the increase in the deficit came in the last quarter, it seems.

“I have never seen such a high fiscal deficit in my career,” said Ashfaque Hassan Khan, the former economic adviser and now dean of the business school at National University of Science and Technology (NUST), adding that the Ministry of Finance never focused on expenditure control while revenues were heading to historic shortfalls.