PESHAWAR: The Centre for Peace and Development Initiative (CPDI) on Thursday released its third annual report on the state of budget transparency in Pakistan and called for the budget proposals to be widely discussed with civic groups, government agencies and key stakeholders to address deficiencies in the budgeting process at federal and provincial levels.
It said that the participation of citizens in the budgeting process should be given legal protection and the government institutions should be obliged to consult with the citizens during the various stages of budgeting, especially the role of the members of the assembly during budgeting and its implementation.
In this regard, the member organization of Citizen Network for Budget Accountability (CNBA) Saiban Development Organization Mardan organized a dialogue on transparent budget preparations.
The meeting was attended by male and female councilors, civil society and media. Mohammad Arif said that for the last ten years CPDI had been trying to improve the budgeting process from the district level to the federal level and to promote transparency in it.
CPDI Provincial Coordinator Shams Al Hadi and Muhammad Arif of Saiban Development Organization said, “Like last year, this year also the process has been reviewed at the federal and provincial levels.”
“As a result, a report based on Budget transparency situation in Pakistan 2023 has been released,” he said.
“This report consists of two parts, the first part deals with requests for information sent to various federal ministries and provincial departments in which information was sought about various stages during the budgeting process.
“Around 150 requests for obtaining information were sent to the selected federal ministries and provincial departments to check transparency in the process, in which 38 requests were sent to the Federal Capital, 112 requests to Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh provinces.
“Not a single response to all these requests was received within the stipulated time, which is very disappointing,” he deplored.
The second part of the report examines the comprehensiveness of the budget documents and the participation of citizens in budgeting and gave first position to KP, second to Punjab, third to Sindh and fourth to Balochistan.
The report demanded that the provincial and federal governments should ensure the implementation of access to information laws and remove obstacles in the way to promote budget transparency and also extend the period of discussion and approval on the budget so that It can be discussed at length.
It further said that along with this, legal protection should be given to consultation with relevant stakeholders, especially citizens, and a transparent and open budget policy based on providing maximum information should be formulated.
