Every year, Pakistan’s federal budget arrives with familiar choreography: a frantic scramble for revenue, a ritualistic promise of belt-tightening, a prayer for donor approval—and, inevitably, a deepening economic funk. The budget, instead of being a strategic tool to unleash growth and build reserves, has become a reactive exercise designed to appease creditors and perpetuate the status quo.

This is not just a budgeting problem—it is a full-blown political economy failure. To break this cycle, we must fundamentally reimagine the budget—not as a ledger-balancing ritual, but as the central engine of economic revival through a sustained growth acceleration.

Bloated government

Pakistan’s budget has historically expanded alongside a steady growth in government spending—starting with the welfare and development spree of the Bhutto years. Since then, successive governments have continued to bloat expenditures, expand political patronage networks, and indulge in borrowed vanity projects. Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share of the budget is now devoured by a bloated and inefficient government machinery—ministries, SOEs, elite subsidies, and ever-growing civilian and military pensions.

Development spending (PSDP) does not fare much better. It is either slashed mid-year or burned on politically motivated brick-and-mortar projects that neither raise productivity nor enhance exports. Numerous studies show that public investment in Pakistan is failing to crowd in private capital, generate jobs, or enhance competitiveness. No surprise, then, that economic growth has been on a steady downward slope this century.

Don’t tax the economy to death

Maintaining the donor mantra that the “tax-to-GDP........

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