Budget preparation: call for empowering National Assembly's bodies for greater role

Chairpersons of different parliamentary committees and other lawmakers on Thursday called for empowering the parliamentary committees to have a greater and positive role in preparation of fiscal budget. They chairpersons of different standing committees of the National Assembly were of the view that the committees should be empowered for greater role in preparation of budget so that these committees could give meaningful input.
The views were expressed during a workshop on "Parliamentary Committees and the Budget Process" organised by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat), specifically for the chairs and members of National Assembly's Standing Committees.
They underscored the need of pre-budget public hearing and consultations on the budget and urged that the Finance Committee should be involved in the process. They also called for starting the process from December 2009 in major cities of the country, so that a comprehensive set of budget proposals could be presented to Finance Ministry by April 2010 for inclusions in the next year's budget.
MNA Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who is a member of National Assembly's Standing Committee on Finance, was the keynote speaker, while Chairperson NA's Standing Committee on Finance Fauzia Wahab chaired the workshop. The participants included 22 chairs and members of 18 different committees of the National Assembly besides committees' staff mainly from the Finance, Defence, Planning and Development and Women's Development committees.
Khawaja Asif outlined the role of standing committees and especially in scrutiny of the budget. He explained relevant parliamentary rules and urged the MPs to exercise their powers and abilities to conduct public consultations. He stressed the need of strengthening the standing committees. The participants discussed as to how they could effectively review the budgetary items in face of a non-co-operative bureaucracy in various ministries falling within the jurisdiction of the committees.
Chairperson NA's Standing Committee on Defence raised concerns regarding defence budget and particularly mentioned the difficulties due to the non-disclosure of segregated data of defence budget. She pointed out that this rendered meaningful scrutiny of the budget impossible. The parliamentarians appreciated Pildat's efforts to increase transparency and accountability, besides enhancing capacity of parliamentarians.