THE coalition government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has presented another budget for the financial year 2025-26, duly guided and okayed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and got it approved by the National Assembly.
The new financial year has already set in from July 01, 2025. Federal budget documents, among others, included the Annual Plan 2025-26 and Public Sector Development Programme 2025-26, which duly reflected the plans, programmes and priorities of the incumbent federal government for the welfare and well-being of the people at large and indicated its development priorities during the new financial year.
Since the budget documents were somehow not available, the media people, article writers including this scribe and others, had downloaded their requirements from the websites of the Federal Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives/Planning Commission for dilating on different aspects and development priorities listed in the Annual Plan and Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) during the new financial year 2025-26. This little piece dilates on the PSDP, highlighting the federal government’s development priorities during the just commenced new fiscal year.
According to the information gathered from the relevant official budget documents, the PSDP serves as an operational instrument to mobilize indigenous and foreign funding resources and to stimulate various sectors of the national economy, aiming at maintaining its ongoing upward trajectory. Quite obviously, the PSDP reflected the solemn commitment of the federal government towards achieving the objectives set under the National Plan for ensuring balanced, equitable, inclusive and sustainable development and growth.
The country’s highest economic body, the National Economic Council (NEC), which is chaired by the Prime Minister as and when it meets once or twice a year, had approved the national development outlay of Rs 4224 billion in the first week of June 2025 for fiscal year 2025-26. This was stated to be the highest ever government investment in the development sector and comprised Federal PSDP at Rs 1000 billion, Annual Development Programmes (ADPs) of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces at Rs 2869 billion and development outlay of Rs 355 billion for the State-Owned Enterprises. The PSDP has faced significant challenges, with the development size only accounting for 5.8 percent of the total size of the federal budget and merely 0.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), thus highlighting the bitter fact that only limited fiscal space was available. It has duly been pointed out that the current throw-forward of more than Rs 10 trillion against a PSDP size of Rs 1000 billion implied that the existing projects portfolio would take a decade to complete, provided no new project was added or revision was undertaken.
It has been asserted by the official sources concerned that the PSDP 2025-26 has been formulated under a resource-constrained environment, marked by fiscal discipline, yet guided by an unwavering focus on the federal government’s development priorities. Lessons have been duly drawn from the PSDP 2024-25 and recommendations from various institutional reviews, including those under the IMF’s Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) framework. A thorough review had also been undertaken for pruning the sick and non-performing development projects in all sectors and duly focusing on the priority projects which contribute to the much-desired national development, economic growth and URAAN Pakistan framework.
It has been emphatically pointed out that the PSDP 2025-26 has been duly aligned with the objectives of URAAN Pakistan, while due priority has also been attached to high-impact, near-completion development projects, foreign-funded projects with adequate rupee cover and new initiatives of national importance. Owing to the resource constraints, even genuine demands for the development projects falling under the above categories have not been met. Nevertheless, due focus has been placed on development projects of national level and strategic projects of the provinces have also been accommodated as much as possible. Despite resource constraints, mega/core development projects have been duly prioritized so that ongoing implementation of these projects does not suffer during the just commenced fiscal year. These projects so prioritized include N-25 Quetta-Karachi, Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway (M-6), Dasu Hydropower Project including evacuation, Diamer Basha Dam, K-IV and Water Augmentation Projects of Karachi, Supply of Power to Allama Iqbal Industrial City, Karachi and Islamabad Information Technology (IT) Parks, Reconstruction of houses and schools damaged in floods in Sindh, Post Flood 2022 Reconstruction Programme in Balochistan, Thar Coal Rail Connectivity, Cancer Hospital in Islamabad, Prime Minister’s National Programme for Control of Hepatitis “C” and Diabetes etc.
Key new initiatives and core projects under the ongoing development agenda included major infrastructure projects such as the Widening and Improvement of Phase-I of N-5, Mushkhel-Panjgur Road (191 kms) and Eastbay Expressway Phase-II in Gwadar. Strategic advancements in space science have also been prioritized through the Pakistan Manned Space Mission and the Pakistan Lunar Exploration Rover. Human development has also been prioritized by way of initiatives like the Scholarship Programme for Bangladesh and Uzbekistan and other friendly countries, along with the establishment of a Centre of Excellence for Autism in Islamabad and multiple Daanish Schools in Islamabad, Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan. Key urban and industrial projects included the Development of Karachi Industrial Park and the Expansion of Safe City Islamabad.
However, there was no mention of mega railway projects — Rehabilitation and Upgradation of Main Line (ML-1) from Karachi to Peshawar and Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) — which were in the pipeline for quite some time for possible concessional financing under the overall framework of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The PSDP 2025-26 has listed 814 projects of 41 Federal Ministries/Divisions and two corporations. But the official sources have somehow not indicated how many of these were most likely to be completed by the end of June 2026, provided there were no interruptions or time and cost escalation in any manner.
—The writer is Lahore-based Columnist and ® Deputy Controller (News), Radio Pakistan.
(zahidriffat@gmail.com)
