Govt ‘bleeding’ Rs5-6 trillion annually, Senate body laments

A Senate subcommittee on Devolution said on Monday that the federal government was losing Rs5 to Rs6 trillion each year by keeping ministries and functions that belong to the provinces and the Council of Common Interests, according to Dawn. The panel said the Centre had knowingly disregarded the 18th Amendment, a constitutional breach in its view. The convenor, Senator Barrister Zamir Hussain Ghumro, tied a smaller federal government to lower spending.

The committee compared a federal budget of about Rs19 trillion for FY2026-27 with roughly Rs20 trillion in combined tax and non-tax receipts. It listed 25 ministries and bodies as unlawfully kept by the Centre, among them health, education, water resources, railways and Wapda. It also called for shutting down or devolving those entities without affecting their staff, and for the CCI to be rebuilt on equal provincial footing.

The subcommittee proposed limiting the federal government to nine ministries with a budget of Rs3.3 trillion, which it said could bring federal spending down from Rs19 trillion to Rs13 trillion. Provincial budgets for 2026-27, it added, came to Rs5.9 trillion in Punjab, Rs3.5 trillion in Sindh, Rs2.1 trillion in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Rs1.089 trillion in Balochistan. The subcommittee warned that failing to act urgently would amount to subversion of the Constitution.