ISLAMABAD: Legislators from both sides of the divide in the Senate on Monday expressed grave concern over the burgeoning debt of Pakistan without a road map on how to come out of this cycle and feared it would lead the country nowhere.
During the proceedings, the government came under fire also for the benchmark that a person earning Rs280 per day was not poor. In her budget speech, PPP Vice President and parliamentary leader in the House Senator Sherry Rehman regretted that approximately 42.8 percent of the federal budget was being absorbed by debt servicing, including both interest and principal repayments.
She expressed concern that when nearly half of the budget was consumed by debt obligations, the space available for development, social protection and public investment became severely constrained while the state-owned enterprises (SoEs) continued to place a heavy burden on public finances as well.
Sherry said, “Losses of the SoEs reached Rs832.848 billion in FY2025, with cumulative losses now standing at Rs6.563 trillion. Yet another Rs451 billion has been allocated to SOEs in this budget. This is a structural challenge that cannot be ignored indefinitely”. The PPP lawmaker called for reforms in governance and public expenditure, urging the government to rationalise ministries, departments and institutions that continue to impose significant operational costs on the national exchequer. She emphasised a fair taxation system built on direct taxes and a broader base, warning that Pakistan’s growing reliance on indirect levies was undermining fiscal stability and burdening ordinary citizens. She insisted that the country needed sustainable economic reforms and not stop-gap measures while direct taxes should be increased and indirect taxes should be reduced to lessen the burden on ordinary citizens.
“Pakistan cannot become economically self-reliant without widening the scope of taxation. The ballooning Petroleum Development Levy is a key concern, as excessive reliance on levies and indirect taxation raises serious questions about the long-term sustainability of our revenue structure,” she maintained and advocated bringing services, trade and retail businesses into the tax net to expand fiscal space.
Opening the budget debate, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Allama Raja Nasir Abbas blasted Budget 2026-27 as a document that does not protect the people’s political independence and pushes Pakistan deeper into the foreign economic control.
He feared that the government had again made the public irrelevant in the budget, as it will further increase Pakistan’s dependence on the global imperialist powers instead of helping to tackle joblessness and inflation and gaining self-reliance.
Senator Abbas wondered whether the budget could free the country from the economic dominance of outsiders or was “throwing us further into that quagmire”. Quoting from the Holy Quran, he asked has this budget brought economic freedom. This budget is making us more enslaved, he said. “The budget has ignored ordinary Pakistanis. They have not been kept in focus. The Pakistani people are irrelevant in this budget,” he said.
He noted that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had presented fifth budget but every budget had risen every year since the government took office and that debt had increased a hundred times since they took charge, including two years of PDM regime, which was also headed by him.
The opposition leader warned that debt was rising so fast that the country was heading toward becoming a failed state. Quoting the government’s own poverty threshold of Rs8,432 monthly income, he asked, “Which Aristotle said someone earning Rs280 per day is not poor? Even going by that calculation, 70 million people are poor. Twenty million more people fell below the poverty line this year”.
He also questioned the yardstick of being literate and said was it okay to say that anyone who can write his name is literate. Senator Abbas claimed the budget gave relief to the rich while the poor paid levies and remarked. “You are taking levies from the poor youth who put petrol in motorcycles. Money is being squeezed out by tearing apart the poor man’s stomach. Where is it being spent? You are not cutting your own expenses”.
He wondered would anybody hold accountable those, who had ruled this country for forty years and brought Pakistan to this alarming position.
He lamented that no province had wheat stocks left and strategic assets for food security were being eroded. He also questioned spending priorities and noted, “What is being spent on education in the country? If Pakistan is so good, then why have our rulers invested abroad and set up factories there”.
He said politicians were being jailed for 50 years and branded terrorists and traitors. “Being a politician in this country is a crime. They are called traitors. But those who broke the country, broke the Constitution, imposed martial law are not the traitors,” he said. “Politicians are so helpless that they cannot arrange a meeting with Imran Khan. Imran Khan will not bow his head even while in jail. Those who want to make politics an example wanted to bend him but they could not,” he stressed.
He claimed that Imran Khan was being punished only for being a politician, who did not commit corruption, did not set up a single factory. Businessmen and traders should not do politics, they will loot, he said.
Senator Abbas accused the government of forcing provinces to give up money in violation of the 18th Amendment, who will have to cut allocations for health and education to do so. He asked the government to come forward and hold dialogue to first bring about political stability instead of merely delivering speeches.
Taking part in the debate, PTI Senator Mohsin Aziz took the government to task and alleged rigging from 2024 general polls to Gilgit-Baltistan elections and said the budget offered nothing to the public.
The senator said he would have praised the government had petrol been cheaper, people had relief and the national treasury had grown. Instead, he said, prices had doubled and debt had ballooned, as Pakistan’s debt stood at Rs44 trillion over 74 years, but surged to Rs97 trillion in the last four years.
He wondered, “Where are we taking Pakistan? Debt has more than doubled. When there is no political stability then this is what happens”.
Mohsin compared Pakistan’s exports to India’s $440 billion and said, “Every day we are moving backwards. Wheat flour rate had risen from Rs1,100 to Rs2,600 per maund, while other essentials have also become unaffordable”.
The PTI lawmaker criticised the Petroleum Development Levy and regretted that it was being collected directly from the public. Calling the budget “empty”, he remarked, “No matter how many claims you make on TV, this budget is nothing”.
He also hit out at the rulers for their energy policy and also noted that the consumers using 200 units got relief but those at 202 units lost it entirely.
“To avoid this, the poor installed small solar systems and were called ‘robbers’ for it,” he said. Mohsin said two parties (PMLN and PPP) gave the country nothing but false promises and underlined the need for political stability.
Starting his budget speech, PPP Senator Rana Mahmood-ul-Hassan urged the Senate to take up the issue of targeted attacks against Pakistanis in South Africa and said the Foreign Office must intervene immediately to protect over 100,000 nationals living there.
Senator Sarmad Ali sounded optimistic and expressed confidence that the benefits of US-Iran peace agreement will reach the common man in the form of a reduction in the prices of petroleum products. The House will resume budget debate now on Tuesday (today) afternoon.
