Finance: Don’t forget overseas Pakistanis

In nine months of this fiscal year (between July 2022 and March 2023), the PML-N led government borrowed more than Rs2 trillion from banks to meet budgetary requirements, according to the State Bank of Pakistan. In the same period of the last fiscal year (between July 2021 and March 2022), the then PTI-led federal government borrowed Rs969 billion. The government’s need for borrowing has been on the rise as tax revenues continue to fall short in meeting expenses, the largest head of them being domestic and external debt servicing. And non-tax revenue, too, isn’t growing because most of the state-owned enterprises keep reporting huge losses — thanks to their unaddressed structural issues of overstaffing, inefficiency and financial irregularities. The government is borrowing heavily from banks not only to service domestic debt but also to ensure the security and defence of the country and maintain law and order. Besides, bank borrowings are being used to pay salaries and pensions to the state employees, provide funds to parliamentarians for “development”, and feed a large army of government functionaries, including ministers, state ministers and special assistants to the prime minister.