ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Assembly passed the federal budget’s demand for grants in a single session on Monday, approving 135 spending allocations worth a combined Rs27 trillion for fiscal year 2026-27 while rejecting all 587 cut motions the opposition threw at it a clean legislative sweep that Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb secured without conceding a single rupee to opposition demands.
The session handed Pakistan’s military the largest single allocation in the entire budget. Defence Services walked away with Rs3 trillion a flat Rs3,000,000,000,000 dwarfing every other line item on the sheet and cementing the defence establishment’s position as the single biggest claimant on Pakistan’s national treasury. The Defence Division itself received an additional Rs17.1 billion on top of that, while Combined Civil Armed Forces drew Rs298 billion, Airports Security Force Rs21.65 billion, and cantonment schools Rs17.58 billion. Add the pieces together and Pakistan’s total security-related spending in this budget crosses a number that makes every other ministry look like a rounding error.
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National Assembly Budget Approval
The civilian side of the budget carried its own headline number. Grants, Subsidies and Miscellaneous Expenditure claimed Rs2.504 trillion the second largest allocation after defence reflecting the government’s continuing struggle to manage energy sector circular debt, subsidise power tariffs, and keep state-owned enterprises from dragging the fiscal accounts into a deeper hole than they already occupy.
Benazir Income Support Programme secured Rs844.78 billion, the largest direct welfare allocation in Pakistan’s history and a figure that reflects both the IMF’s insistence on expanding social protection and the political reality that the ruling coalition cannot afford to cut cash transfers to 10 million-plus households heading into an election cycle.
Welfare Spending Surges
The Power Division drew Rs578.84 billion, a number that tells its own story about how much Pakistan spends managing the consequences of a broken electricity pricing system rather than fixing it. Railways received Rs70.48 billion, Higher Education Commission Rs66.43 billion, and Foreign Missions Pakistan’s embassies and consulates around the world Rs63.16 billion.
The opposition’s 587 cut motions, every single one rejected, targeted allocations ranging from intelligence spending to the Rs952 million earmarked for the Special Technology Zone Authority. Focus Pakistan learnt that the National Accountability Bureau secured Rs7.74 billion, the Human Rights Division Rs1.83 billion, and the newly established Cannabis Control and Regulatory Authority one of the budget’s more eyebrow-raising line items Rs250 million.
Opposition Suffers Clean Sweep
Superannuation allowances and pensions consumed Rs1.162 trillion, a figure that grows every year and which fiscal economists describe as one of the most stubborn structural pressures on Pakistan’s public finances. The Federal Board of Revenue, the institution responsible for generating the revenue that pays for all of this, received Rs85.6 billion to run its operations less than three percent of what the government allocated to defence services alone.
The budget now moves toward formal enactment, with the Finance Bill expected to clear the House before the June 30 fiscal year deadline.
