Rising cost govt’s ‘biggest challenge,’ says Jhagra, calls to control ‘unnecessary growth’

Finance Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra has raised concern over the rising cost of government, calling it the government’s ‘biggest challenge.’

Jhagra in a series of tweets on Tuesday highlighted several issues faced by his province government and the government at large and was of the view that there is a need to “control unnecessary growth in the size of government.”

“Sometimes we need to rise above politics. Remember, the biggest challenge of government is the cost of government. The salaries and pensions challenge that we face across Pakistan is one that has to be solved. If we don't find a solution as a country, we will never be able to progress,” he tweeted while sharing graphs of KP Budget 2020-21.

The minister said that in many countries, public scrutiny on government budgets is on whether the government is minimizing its own cost. “Remember, everything government doesn't spend on itself, it spends on the 99pc of the population not working for the government,” he said.

The minister informed that in KP, salary, and pension spending has increased by 450 percent over the last ten years. “This is true across Pakistan, and this is why we have to control unnecessary growth in the size of government, standing at over 500,000 employees in KP. We have acted boldly on this,” he said.

“We focused new recruitment where it matters; teachers; doctors; rescue staff; people who deliver service. We changed retirement age rules (there being challenged in court has added Rs. 16 billion to this year's salary bill). And we will continue this reform journey.

The minister then appreciated his government’s measures in the recently announced budget saying that KP not only gave the highest development budget allocations countrywide, we constantly innovate. “Last year, because of early releases, we spent more early, & we also put in place a new ADP dynamic policy.”

The KP government on Friday unveiled a Rs923 billion tax-free budget for the financial year 2020-21, in which Rs124 billion has been allocated for the health sector.

In the last provincial budget, a huge amount of Rs184 billion had been allocated for merged areas of erstwhile FATA in the budget to bring this hitherto neglected area at par with developed districts of the country.