On 12 June, the new government presented its first budget, for the fiscal year 2024-25. The budget aims to be a transformative blueprint for addressing lingering human security challenges, delineated in the National Security Policy 2022. The budget allocation clearly indicates the government’s emphasis on youth empowerment, women’s development, and public sector growth. While these initiatives appear promising, their outcomes are dependent on implementation, adequacy, and long-term impact.
The National Security Policy 2022 envisions equipping the bulging youth of Pakistan with necessary tools and environment for productive contribution toward the nation to ensure human security. The allocation of Rs 80 billion under the Prime Minister’s special initiatives for youth empowerment complies with this objective. However, the real challenge lies in translation of this budget allocation into tangible outcomes. In the past, similar youth programmes under the 2013 and 2019 governments suffered from inefficiencies and missed targets. Therefore, without a comprehensive mechanism for monitoring and evaluation, this substantial investment also risks falling into the trap of underutilisation and mismanagement.
The increased allocation of Rs 25.7 billion for the Federal Education and Professional Training Division highlights the government’s commitment to improve educational infrastructure and vocational training programmes. However, this initiative needs a clearly defined target. Despite the establishment of many vocational training centres in accordance with the National Education Policy 2009, these centres have not produced significant outcomes. Structural and operational failures such as the unavailability of resourceful instructors and outdated curricula have hindered their effectiveness. Therefore, the effectiveness of this investment needs a bottom-up approach and depends on a comprehensive overhaul of the education system to meet the modern standards.
To support women’s development, the government has increased the budget for Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) by 27 percent. Additionally, a significant share has been allocated for skill development and training of women under the Poverty Graduation Programme. These initiatives aim to economically empower the women of Pakistan. However, without addressing the deep-rooted socio-cultural barriers, it is challenging to achieve meaningful women’s participation in the country’s economic activities. Therefore, to ensure gender parity in poverty graduation and skill development programmes, community sensitisation, anti-discrimination policies, and active efforts to retain girls in school, are required. These targets require active participation of officials in the lower echelon of the government along with budget shares.
The allocation of Rs 1.4 trillion for the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP), indicates the government’s intention to attain human security through public welfare initiatives. This investment emphasises education, public service delivery, and pro-poor initiatives. However these measures need to be balanced with fthwe iscal deficit and revenue collection. Without this balance, these initiatives risk increasing inflation and Pakistan’s long-term dependency on loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
To sum up, although the federal budget for fiscal year 2024-25 presents a comprehensive strategy to ensure human security by allocating large sums for youth empowerment, women development and public sector growth, the historical gap between allocation and implementation during previous governments needs to be addressed. Therefore, along with budget allocation, the government must address systemic issues, ensure transparency, and make consistent policies to ensure long-term human security.
To mitigate the apprehensions regarding youth development programmes, the government may formulate a monitoring and evaluating committee. This committee would be tasked with keeping track of the budget investment and its outcome. It could employ a data-driven approach to identify gaps and recommend adjustments. Additionally, the increased budget for education and professional training programmes could focus on modern educational reforms to increase the quality of education and not only the quantity of people benefitting from these programmes. It could specifically focus on digital skill learning to meet the global demands.
For women development, the government needs a bottom-up approach. The new poverty graduation programme could start from addressing socio-cultural barriers through community outreach initiatives that promote gender equality. Furthermore, to channel women in economic output financial services could be given extra focus. Instead of just giving microcredits, mentorship networking systems could be introduced for underprivileged women to make their small businesses have lucrative outcomes for the overall economic benefit of the country.
To boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the PSDP, the government may formulate an efficiency and accountability framework focused on optimising the use of public funds through performance monitoring and fiscal discipline. Under this framework, the projects could be analysed on cost-benefit outcomes, and the programmes which have the highest potential for social and economic return may be prioritised.
Moreover, the approach of outcome-linked funding could be adopted. In this approach the projects must meet the milestones for continued funding. It would increase the accountability and efficiency of public development projects.
To sum up, although the federal budget for fiscal year 2024-25 presents a comprehensive strategy to ensure human security by allocating large sums for youth empowerment, women development and public sector growth, the historical gap between allocation and implementation during previous governments needs to be addressed. Therefore, along with budget allocation, the government must address systemic issues, ensure transparency, and make consistent policies to ensure long-term human security.
