PTI flays budget over ‘broken promises’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf criticised the federal budget in the Senate on Tuesday, with its parliamentary leader Barrister Syed Ali Zafar describing the government’s fiscal plan as a package of broken promises and arguing that it failed to provide public relief or a workable path to long-term economic growth.

Opening his speech on the FY2026-27 budget, Zafar said a budget should serve two central purposes: improving the lives of ordinary people and creating a foundation for sustained growth and employment. He told the Senate that the government’s plan had fallen short on both counts, saying it offered neither meaningful support for households under strain nor a credible framework for economic revival and job creation.

"Unfortunately, this budget fails to achieve either objective. It neither provides meaningful relief to the common citizen nor sets out a credible long-term plan for economic development and job creation," Zafar said, addressing the upper house.

The PTI senator said the government had overlooked what he called 11 vital areas that should have been at the centre of a serious economic programme. He listed these as a long-term growth strategy, an industrialisation policy, agricultural reforms despite increasing imports of cotton, wheat and sugar, export promotion, youth employment, expansion of the information technology sector, a solution to circular debt, a coherent energy policy, investment in dams and water conservation in view of mounting pressure on the Jhelum and Chenab rivers, climate change, population growth management and education.

He also said successive governments had relied on short-term measures instead of addressing structural problems in the economy. Turning specifically to education, Zafar said the sector had been ignored despite its importance to national development.

"Education is the foundation of progress and prosperity, yet the government appears to have neglected it entirely. It is as though the government does not wish to spread the light of knowledge among the people but is instead content to leave them in the darkness of ignorance," he said, speaking on education.