Govt cutting down expenditures by rightsizing: CM’s aide
Says unfilled vacancies are being abolished so that the process of rightsizing does not gets affected.
KARACHI: Advisor to Finance Minister Khurram Schehzad has said that the government is focusing on cutting down its expenditure by right sizing.
He was speaking in a panel discussion organized at the Karachi Literature Festival. He stated that the budget of the civil government was $3 billion which was 836 billion rupees. The federal government has 43 ministries with more than 400 departments, many ministries have been devolved to the provinces, which will be gradually abolished from the federal government.
Mr Schehzad said that there are three or four major heads in government expenditure, salaries of civil government officers and employees, pensions, SOEs, energy and related subsidies, they all sums up to 3 to 4 trillion rupees, so by adopting the right-sizing strategy we are closing ministries or merging their departments. Our target of right sizing is to reduce one billion dollars out of three billion dollars.
He maintained that the unfilled vacancies are being abolished so that the process of right sizing does not gets affected, till now 150,000 vacancies have been scrapped. He said that the Finance Minister is determined that long-term sustainability should be prioritized over short-term relief. He said that the State Bank has made tremendous efforts to stabilize the rupee devaluation, economic course corrections are taking place, it will take time but continuity is the key.
Mr Schehzad said that there are two major issues, transitional and transformational, fiscal deficit and current account have to be fixed, revenue has to be increased while expenditure and taxes needs to be reduced. Transformational issues are related with education and health sectors which is the sole responsibility of the provinces.
Answering a question, he said, “When inflation is higher than the growth it leads to poverty, if inflation drops and the growth does not increase, it still is a better situation”. He added that the federal government is facing two major challenges; climate change and population growth, we are making efforts to control them.
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