Published June 15, 2026 Updated about 5 hours ago By Anjum Ibrahim The expectations - voluntary ceding of the annual rise in the provincial share of the divisible pool to the Centre - premised on a much publicised debate between the Centre and its federating units had been raised to a fever pitch only to be dashed by the budget 2026-27 bringing to mind T S Eliot’s famous proverb in his poem titled The Hollow Man - not with a bang but a whimper. These expectations were reaffirmed a couple of hours before the budget was presented to parliament by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during his televised address subsequent to formal cabinet approval of the budget as he praised his brother, the leader of his party, his niece, the Chief Minister Punjab, the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party as well as the Balochistan and last, but perhaps not least, the Khyber Pakhtukhwa governments for cooperating with the Centre in agreeing to key budgetary proposals. The declaration by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb that this measure has been postponed till next year raises questions about whether he will be able to deliver on this pledge when he clearly failed to get a consensus on other aspects of this year’s budget that required the intervention of the hybrid government as well as a 30- to 40-minute-long chat between the Prime Minister with the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nonetheless, the budget does envisage generating about a trillion rupees more from the provinces in the current year – a rise that from an economic point of view cannot be supported: a rise in provincial surplus from 1379 billion rupees (revised estimates of 2025-26) to 1794 billion rupees in 2026-27 that would generate an additional 415 billion rupees for the Centre. And a reduction in the provincial budgeted allocation for development from 2.869 trillion rupees in the budget last year to 2.224 trillion next year or an additional 649 billion rupees that would accrue to the Centre. Two observations are relevant. First, this accrual will be spent by the Centre on current non-development expenditure accounting for 93 percent of the total budget 2026-27 like last…