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ISLAMABAD: The federal government spent more than Rs5 trillion on devolved provincial subjects and on ministries created on Council of Common Interests (CCI) matters in violation of the Constitution, the head of a Senate panel claimed on Tuesday. Citing data from the report of the Auditor General of Pakistan, Senator Barrister Zamir Hussain Ghumro, chairing a sub-committee of the Senate Functional Committee on Devolution, said the figure was equivalent to more than $18 billion. The convener said the country was facing twin issues of exorbitant federal expenditure and heavy borrowing totalling $135bn. “At present, federal government expenditure stands at around Rs19 trillion, while total tax and non-tax revenue was Rs20tr, leaving nothing for the provinces and forcing the federal government to resort to heavy borrowing,” Ghumro said. The PPP senator contended that had the government implemented the 18th Amendment , devolved provincial matters and handed over CCI matters to the permanent secretariat of the CCI as envisaged under Article 154 of the Constitution, the country would not have needed handouts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). During the last 15 years, the IMF gave Pakistan $15bn, while the government spent $18bn to $20bn on devolved ministries and institutions, he claimed. “Had this amount been spent on infrastructure and social development, Pakistan would have been a different country. “A taxpayer’s hard-earned money had been consigned to unauthorised expenditure,” he added. The convener said the federal government makes two kinds of expenditure from the Federal Consolidated Fund: “charged expenditure” on remuneration and other perks of the president, Senate chair and deputy chair, National Assembly speaker and deputy speaker, auditor general, high court and Supreme Court judges; and debt servicing, which the NA does not vote on, and “other expenditure” in the form of demands for grants by federal ministries created on federal subjects. “It must…

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