Bengali advises provinces to form own planning commissions

ISLAMABAD: Renowned economist Dr Kaiser Bengali has said on Friday that the provinces must establish their own planning commissions to manage and conduct feasibility studies around each development priority. Bengali said this at a closed-door policy roundtable titled “Fiscal Choices, Human Consequences: Pakistan’s Development Budget in Focus, ” hosted by Globesight. Senior representatives from the government, leading economic think tanks, multilateral organizations, and Pakistan’s wider development community attended the event. Senior economist Dr Kaiser Bengali stated that Pakistan needs to follow a growth-centred approach for its development strategy. Now that we have devolution through the 18th Amendment, provinces must also create their own planning commissions. The discussion was held against the backdrop of Pakistan’s recently announced FY2026-27 budget, which prioritizes strict fiscal consolidation as a roadmap to short-term economic stability amid debt servicing overhangs. With development spending sustaining significant cuts under this mandate, the roundtable raised a fundamental question: How does Pakistan meet its soaring demand for investments in human development when fiscal space is compressed? Speakers said that Pakistan’s development model needs to move towards outcome-based accountability. Participants examined current trends and execution challenges within various sectoral programmes; whether the country’s persistent development gap is driven primarily by resource misallocation, spending inefficiency, or institutional fragmentation; and what reforms could better align federal and provincial development budgets to strengthen human capital and long-term resilience. The roundtable also examined the implications of devolution after the 18th Amendment, with education, health, and population discussed as priority sectors. Opening the discussion, Hasan Hanif, moderator and Partner at Globesight, said that Pakistan appears caught in a brick-and-mortar trap: too much development spending remains tied to infrastructure, old throw-forward liabilities, and allocations that are not fully utilized. Jaffer Askari, Senior Economist at the World Bank, said that when the national budget comes out, everyone looks at the allocations for their favoured sector. What we should do instead of looking at allocations is build accountability around outcomes. ” Dr Khadija Bari, Associate Professor at IBA, highlighted: “We tend to treat education, health, and nutrition programs as social spending. We need to move away from this paradigm and treat these as productive expenditures, not just welfare or development expenditures. ” The roundtable forms part of Globesight’s ongoing engagement with policymakers and development partners across South Asia to advance evidence-based, human-centered fiscal policy. Globesight looks forward to sharing detailed insights and recommendations emerging from the discussion in the coming weeks. Copyright Business Recorder, 2026

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