Parliamentary budget office

WHILE the budget session in the federal and provincial assemblies is in progress, some members of the two Houses of parliament have again raised the need for an independent office within parliament to provide an unbiased analysis of the annual budget to the legislators.

The argument is that if members of parliament have to debate various aspects of the budget as informed legislators and exercise oversight on the executive’s produced budget, they need support from an entity which is outside the control of the executive so that the numbers produced by the Ministry of Finance for the budget and by the Ministry of Planning and Development for the Public Sector Development Programme can be scrutinised and independently verified before the parliamentarians provide their feedback and input during the budget debate.

In fact, a member of the National Assembly had introduced a private member’s bill titled the ‘Parliamentary Budget Office Bill, 2025’, in the Assembly last year. The bill was referred to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance which asked its sub-committee chaired by Dr Nafisa Shah to examine the proposal in depth.

As one can gather from media reports, the bill was strongly opposed by the representatives of the finance ministry who complained to the sub-committee that the bill granted excessive powers to the proposed budget office. The ministry also objected to the suggested direct reporting relationship of the proposed office to parliament without taking the ministry into confidence.

While the bill was not passed in its original form, it was agreed that the ministry’s finance and revenue divisions would come up with an amended draft for consideration of the sub-committee and the full committee. As the debate on the 2026-27 budget commences, there is no sign that such a draft has been placed before the committee or that the committee has taken that into consideration.

A parliamentary budget office is not a novel idea; a number of countries around the world have established such offices to support the independent character of their respective parliaments but most of them are mature democracies in the developed world. Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and US are among those with independent budget offices within their respective parliaments. Some developing or mid-level countries like Kenya also have a parliamentary budget office.

The only exception seems to be Afghanistan during the pre-Taliban period when USAID and development agencies from many developed democracies were working hard to transform Afghanistan into a democracy. USAID supported the establishment of a parliamentary budget office in Afghanistan in 2007, which continued to function right up to the Taliban takeover in 2021. In keeping with the overall democracy project in Afghanistan, there is no evidence that the Afghan parliamentary budget office reported any meaningful success.

A typical office of this kind requires highly skilled and professional staff ranging from 15 to 45 members — depending on the scope of work. The cost of establishing a typical parliamentary budget office ranges from $3 million to $10m with an annual operational cost ranging from $5m to $10m for a country like Pakistan. In comparison, America’s Congressional Budget Office employs hundreds of professional staff and its operational cost is in the vicinity of $65m. The Netherlands spends around $8m to $10m per year.

Many countries have parliamentary budget offices to support parliament’s independence.

It is normal to expect that there will be some level of tension or even confrontation between the parliamentary budget office and government.

For example, Canada’s parliamentary budget officer recently released the highly scrutinised Economic and Fiscal Outlook — June 2026 that revealed that the federal deficit had essentially doubled to 72 billion Canadian dollars in the last fiscal year, putting the government’s fiscal targets in jeopardy. The office’s reports have frequently challenged the government’s financial management as the nation approached an election, embarrassing the ruling party and putting at risk its electoral prospects. It is, therefore, understandable that the government in Pakistan has resisted the idea of such an independent institution.

Confrontations are not limited to those with governments. The Canadian parliamentary budget office, in the past, has also crossed swords with the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons and defied his explicit instructions to submit its reports to the Speaker’s office or the finance committee before making it public. There was a long-standing confrontation between the first parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page and the Speaker at the time.

This writer witnessed the state of relations between the two while conducting three study visits of Pakistani parliamentarians to the Canadian parliament from 2009 to 2011. This example could serve as a reminder to all concerned that when an ‘independent’ entity is created, it may not accept dictation even from its creator. All those advocating for an independent parliamentary budget office may read the book Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill authored by Kevin Page.

While Pakistani legislators may continue to seek the creation of an independent parliamentary budget office, a practical compromise solution may be to strengthen the staffing of the Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, both quantitatively and qualitatively. By inducting qualified professionals on the basis of merit, the committee can significantly enhance its research and analytical capacity, while avoiding endless argument with the government.

Sadly, our standing committees relating to various divisions of the federal government lack the capacity to undertake any meaningful oversight of the concerned ministries and divisions. In fact, the entire committee system may need to be strengthened by providing it with dedicated researchers and analysts in addition to physical infrastructure such as offices and dedicated meeting rooms.

Compared to the creation of a parliamentary budget office, it may be more practical and attainable to strengthen parliamentary committees.

The writer is president of the Pakistan-based think tank Pildat.

president@pildat.org

X: @ABMPildat

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2026 ...