The budget 2024-25 exercise is akin to a five-legged kangaroo - one leg manacled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), another by an elite refusing to accept a wage or procurement freeze, the third shackled by political allies and the fourth by an increasingly restive public refusing to be appeased by doctored lower inflation and unemployment figures. When grazing, the kangaroo’s fifth leg, the tail, is operational and is being wielded by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz supremo Nawaz Sharif.

And yet bravado appeared to prevail in the Finance Minister’s speech echoing claims of stability, higher revenue, higher reserves, lower inflation, buoyant stock market and his usual harangue that the way forward is through luring foreign direct investment into the country though he emphasized the need for structural reforms pledging implementation - pledges that were made by former finance ministers while presenting the budget but never implemented. However as new sovereign guarantees to be issued are budgeted at 403 billion rupees more than the position on 31 March 2024 one may assume that foreign investment inflows will not be extended guarantees.

Muhammad Aurengzeb emphasized that the government would engage only in essential services and not in business – a view of capitalism practiced perhaps only in the United States and redundant in the rest of the world with even European countries sporting a mixed economy with elements of socialism and capitalism.

The Finance Minister’s claim that the government will reduce wasteful expenditure was refuted as he budgeted a current expenditure rise to 17 trillion rupees – 491 billion rupees higher than projected by the IMF in its second and........

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