Between 2010 and 2026, the federal government sent a total of Rs56 trillion to Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta. Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta confirmed receiving the entire sum. What happened to Rs56 trillion after they reached Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta? No one is showing the ledger.
Between 2010 and 2026, the federal government sent an equivalent of Rs14 lakh for each and every Pakistani household. The question is what citizens received in return. Rs56 trillion could have built 747,000 schools, 187,000 clinics and 267,000 km of roads. How many children were added to school? How many
hospital beds became operational? How many kilometres of road became usable? How much clean water reached households? How much did learning, health and mobility improve?
Rs56 trillion is the equivalent of $200 billion. Compare that to Pakistan’s external public debt: $93 billion. Stack Rs56 trillion in Rs100 notes. The pile would rise 56,000 kilometres into space. That is 1.4 times around the Earth; 6,300 Mount Everests.
The post-2010 fiscal arrangement created five centres of financial power – Islamabad to accumulate debt and Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta to spend without a transparent ledger of outcomes. The day the 18th Amendment was passed,
Pakistan’s national debt and liabilities were Rs10 trillion. Today: Rs100 trillion.
This cannot continue.
Of every Rs100 distributed horizontally under the 7th NFC formula, roughly Rs52 went to Punjab, Rs25 to Sindh, Rs15 to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Rs9 to Balochistan. Applied to Rs56 trillion, that is roughly Rs29 trillion, Rs14 trillion, Rs8 trillion and Rs5 trillion respectively. What did each province deliver against its share?
Between 2010 and 2026, Pakistan’s debt and liabilities rose by around Rs90 trillion. Over the same period, Rs56 trillion went to the provinces. The citizen, however, continues to search for outcomes and receipts.
Rs56 trillion went out for sure. What came back to the citizen is much harder to establish. Why not publish the ledger? Track every rupee from Islamabad to Lahore, from Lahore to Layyah – and from Layyah to the school. Track every rupee from Islamabad to Karachi, from Karachi to Korangi – and from Korangi to the clinic. Put it online. Update it every month. Function by function.
The answer has to be visible where the money is spent in every province, every district, every year. The reform is simple to state: no transfer without disclosure; no expenditure without an outcome; no authority without accountability.
Every rupee should leave a trail. How much came in? Where did it go? What was built? Pakistan has perfected the formula for sending Rs56 trillion down. It has yet to build a system for showing what came back up.
Rs56,000,000,000,000. Twelve zeros. The money is accounted for at the top.
What Pakistan still cannot show clearly is what came out at the bottom. This cannot continue.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. He tweets/posts @saleemfarrukh and can be reached at: [email protected]
