Islamabad:
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has sought an explanation of the three international monetary fund conditions (IMF), since Punjab blames the center of weak income projections and retains his tax participation, a deficit that led to the province to embed his target of cash surplus.
The sources said the federal government believes that the objective was lost due to excessive Punjab spending in development, although both governments were led by the PML-N.
The Prime Minister had asked for a response from the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Board of Income to the History of the Express PAkGazette with respect to Pakistan that is lacking three key objectives of the IMF.
The newspaper reported that Pakistan lost the conditions by fulfilling the fiscal objective of RS12.3 billion, raising RS50 billion merchants and generating more than RS1.2 billion surpluses in cash by the four provinces.
According to a summary of tax operations published by the Ministry of Finance this week, the provinces failed to save the RS1.2 billion objective in the last fiscal year for a wide margin.
Provincial governments had given the understanding to the IMF and the Federal Government to generate cash surpluses from RS1.2 billion, subject to the condition that the FBR fulfills its fiscal objective. However, the four provinces collectively generated a surplus of cash of RS921 billion, losing the objective of the IMF for 296 billion.
During the deliberations, the sources said that the federal government authorities argued that the condition of provincial cash surplus has been lost mainly due to excessive expense by Punjab. They said that when the federal government approached the Punjab government, it returned responsibility to the center.
The sources said that the Punjab government told the center that the objective of provincial cash surplus could not be met because the Finance Division did not transfer the due tax participation under the National Finance Commission and the FBR failed to achieve its objectives.
However, the authorities of the Ministry of Finance stated that the other three provinces also received less money compared to the projections, but they still worked much better with Baluchistan that exceeds the objective of the IMF.
The documents of the Ministry of Finance declared that Punjab, with total income of RS4 billion, spent RS3.6 billion, generating a surplus of RS348 billion. The amount was RS282 billion or 45% less than the objective of the IMF of RS630 billion.
Sindh also lost the objective of the IMF by a margin of RS16 billion or 5.5% and showed a surplus of cash of RS283 billion. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s government was almost close to the target with a gap of only RS2 billion, but the Baluchistan government exceeded the objective in RS3 billion.
But the provincial authorities said they were being painted as the culprit despite the fact that the Ministry of Finance did not pay their due actions against real income collection.
“Based on the FBR Real of RS11.7 billion collection, the Finance Division retained the June June section of the Federal Divisible Group that amounts to 190.8 billion,” said Azma Bukhari, Punjab Information Minister of Information in response to the questions sent by the Express PAkGazette.
Azma Bukhari also declared that if the amounts of RS191 billion had been revealed in June, the Punjab surplus would have been 539.2 billion rupees against the budgeted surplus of 630 billion, which was committed with a FBR target of RS12.97 billion, regardless of any FBR deficit.
In the last budget, the Government had granted RS12.97 billion fiscal objectives to the FBR, but ended up raising RS11.744 billion, the second highest deficit of RS1.23 billion.
The provincial information minister added that Punjab had constantly maintained with the federal government that Punjab’s surplus commitment depended and provided the FBR achieving its collection goal.
In addition, he affirmed that the RS191 billion of the federal participation of the Divisible Punjab pool were kept and reflected as a federal cash balance, which significantly improved the main balance of the federal government, at the expense of the real surplus of Punjab.
“Until mid -June 2025, the provinces did not have a formal intimidation of the Finance Division regarding the reduction of FBR’s objective below the revised objective of RS12.3 billion,” said the Minister of Information. She said this was FBB’s last formally reviewed objective with the IMF after the first revision of 2024-25.
On June 12, 2025, the Finance Division formally hinted a revised estimate of the provincial participation for fiscal year 2024-25, calculated against a projected FBR collection of RS11.9 billion, the provincial government declared. He added even then, the RS11.74 billion real collection reached RS11.74.
The provincial information minister said that Punjab had been on the way to meet his expenses and receipt objectives, together with surplus objectives during the last fiscal year. If FBR raised this total amount of RS12.3 billion, the Punjab surplus would have increased by an additional RS160 billion, while the total surplus would have been RS699 billion, he added.
“The FBR ended well below the revised estimate mark. With such weak income and drastic adjustments on the latest in the fiscal year by FBR, it is not reasonable to expect a province to comply with the budgetary estimates of the surplus objectives,” said the Minister of Information.
