ISLAMABAD
With the country still reeling from the after-effects of the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19), with a new variant discovered just a few weeks ago and a slew of new poliovirus cases after a 14-month gap, the federal government on Friday announced budgetary allocations for the sector which hinted that it may be scaling back some of the services. During his budget speech in the National Assembly on Friday afternoon, Federal Finance Minister Miftah Ismail announced that the government will allocate Rs24 billion for the sector.
“An amount of Rs24 billion has been allocated to provide better health
services to the people, control and eradicate viral diseases, provision
of medical equipment, vaccination and enhancement in the capacity of
health establishment,” he had said.
However, a closer look at the budget documents showed that the quoted
figures and intentions were far from what the government is actually
willing to commit to.
The budgetary allocations show that the government had allocated Rs28.35
billion in the outgoing fiscal year of 2021-2022. However, it went far
over that budget during the course of the year, spending 446.35% more,
or around Rs154.89 billion.
The increase in expenditure was driven by higher spending on the public
health services where Rs126.2 billion were spent despite an initial
allocation of just Rs849 million, an increase of 14,764.5% increase. DNA
