Myra Imran
ISLAMABAD: Experts at a dialogue on development budgets and its human consequences stressed the need to move beyond traditional approaches of measuring progress through financial allocations and instead focus on the real impact of public spending on people’s lives.
They called for introducing district-level development competition by allocating performance-based funds to local governments, alongside comprehensive civil service reforms to strengthen transparency, accountability and performance. Highlighting the need for a shift from investment-focused budgeting to outcome-based planning, experts underscored stronger federal-provincial coordination and greater investment in human resource development.
Senior representatives from the government, leading economic think tanks, multilateral organizations including the World Bank, and Pakistan’s wider development community joined the closed-door policy roundtable titled “Fiscal Choices, Human Consequences: Pakistan’s Development Budget in Focus,” hosted by the Globesight.
