Pakistan’s debt problem is usually told as a story about borrowing. It is just as much a story about not knowing. Official figures differ by definition. The Ministry of Finance put total public debt at Rs86.72 trillion at the end of June 2026, with the debt-to-GDP ratio improving to 68.3 percent from 70.6 percent. The State Bank’s wider measure of debt and liabilities reached Rs99.6 trillion, and servicing it cost Rs12 trillion in the last fiscal year. Both can be correct. The difficulty is that a citizen, a legislator or an investor must work out which perimeter is being quoted. A US State Department review noted that only limited information on debt obligations, including major state-owned enterprise debt, is publicly available. A state that cannot state its own obligations plainly cannot manage them.

The same blindness shapes how money is spent. A July 2026 World Bank assessment found that district funding does not appear to be linked to poverty levels or to indicators such as education, healthcare or infrastructure needs. Reported gaps are large, with Quetta receiving 475 percent more per capita than the........

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