PTI rejects federal budget for FY2026-27, terms it an 'exercise in elite self-preservation'

ISLAMABAD: PTI, the main opposition party in the National Assembly, on Friday rejected the federal budget for FY2026-27, terming it a “refined exercise in elite self-preservation”. In an NA session earlier today, the federal government unveiled a Rs18.8 trillion budget for the upcoming fiscal year. In a statement, PTI Secretary Information Sheikh Waqas Akram said that even the Pakistan Economic Survey released on Thursday showed that the country had been facing a continued decline across sectors compared with the PTI’s tenure. While commenting on the budget, he stated that the government had projected a growth rate of 3.7 per cent as proof of economic resurgence. He noted that the previous administration, despite a global pandemic that paralysed economies worldwide, had recorded growth of nearly 6pc in its final year, while also strengthening the current account and remittances. “The present government, with characteristic modesty, treats its modest achievement as a historic breakthrough, while relying heavily on remittances, foreign borrowing, and factors that deliver little tangible benefit to those who live and work within the economy,” Akram said. The information secretary added that poverty had undergone a “sharp and conspicuous reversal”, pushing millions more citizens below the line of basic subsistence. “The poorest sections of society are now left to manage as best they can, their circumstances made considerably more difficult by conditions this budget claims to have mastered. “The government, in its boundless generosity, acknowledges that recent conflict-driven oil price increases and flood losses placed fresh and unexpected burdens on every household, only to then celebrate the introduction of targeted subsidies it was compelled to provide because broader relief had become too expensive,” he added. Akram further noted that the salaried class, already the most heavily taxed segment of the formal economy, continued to find that meeting basic household oblig