LAHORE: The Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front (PIAF) has called for keeping check on government expenditure and high cost of debt servicing to contain budget deficit, as the Pakistan’s federal budget deficit projection has been revised to history’s highest to over Rs6 trillion, highlighting the unending fiscal woes that have pushed the country into a debt trap despite putting an additional burden of Rs730 billion on industry in the current fiscal year. Expressing serious concern over the high jump in country’s budget deficit – the gap between federal government income and its expenditures, PIAF Chairman Faheem ur Rehman Saigol said the revision has been made in light of recent talks with the International Monetary Fund, which exposed the massive underreporting of expenditures at the time of budget presentation by the finance ministry. This is a highly unsustainable level and has already pushed the country into a situation where debt restructuring seems to be the only viable option. He said that the federal government will book the highest-ever budget deficit despite putting an extra burden of Rs735 billion on industry till the end of June on account of higher gas and electricity tariffs and additional taxes. The PIAF Chairman maintained that the failure to reform the tax system and increase revenue collection is a major factor behind heavy domestic and foreign borrowings by the government. He said that the revised estimate is Rs1.7 trillion, or 37%, more than that approved by the National Assembly at the start of fiscal year 2022-23. The federal budget deficit in June last year had been projected at Rs4.5 trillion. Not only that, the budget gap is also Rs690 billion more than what the government communicated to the IMF in December, which will be bridged by taking more loans from domestic and external sources, a task that the government is unable to perform due to the economic meltdown. Our Correspondent
