Despite official claims of austerity and fiscal discipline, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has sought parliament’s post-facto approval for a record Rs. 3.684 trillion in supplementary grants and expenditure reallocations, according to budget documents placed before the legislature.

The amount is more than four times higher than the Rs. 895 billion regularised by parliament last year, raising fresh questions about the credibility of budget estimates, spending controls and the government’s commitment to fiscal restraint.

Documents submitted by the finance ministry show that the expenditures relate to fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26 and cover spending that exceeded allocations originally approved by parliament. These include outlays made between May 17 and June 30 in 2024-25 and from July 1 to May 15 in 2025-26, after the relevant budgets had already been finalised.

Under Articles 80 to 84 of the Constitution, such expenditures require parliamentary approval, even if the money has already been spent.

In a written statement, the ministry said the expenditures could neither be met from allocated budgetary resources nor be legitimately postponed during the financial years concerned. It said the amounts comprised both supplementary grants and technical supplementary grants.

Technical supplementary grants involve the surrender of funds from one expenditure head and their reallocation to another account or organisation, generally without creating a major additional fiscal burden. Regular supplementary grants, by contrast, represent expenditure overruns or spending incurred without prior legal sanction and carry a direct burden on the public exchequer.

According to the summary of supplementary grants and appropriations, more than Rs. 3.2 trillion is being sought for regularisation for 2024-25, while around Rs. 485 billion relates to the current fiscal year.

For 2024-25, the largest regular supplementary grant is Rs. 2.6 trillion for debt servicing. Other major items include Rs. 430 billion for the power sector, Rs. 38 billion for grants and subsidies, Rs. 23 billion for the Defence Division and Rs. 22 billion for capital outlay on civil works.

For 2025-26, the supplementary grants worth Rs. 485 billion are led by Rs. 127.5 billion for grants and subsidies and Rs. 112 billion for the power sector. Other allocations include Rs. 57 billion for the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, Rs. 34 billion for the Defence Division, Rs. 30 billion for National Health Services, Rs. 20 billion for the interior ministry and Rs. 22.4 billion for poverty alleviation and social safety.

Additional grants were also released for a range of departments and programmes, including Rs. 14 billion for the information ministry, Rs. 10 billion for the Federal Board of Revenue, Rs. 7.9 billion for capital outlay on civil works and Rs. 6.6 billion for railway capital expenditure.

Normally, supplementary grants are meant to meet expenditures for purposes not foreseen at the time of budget preparation. Such grants add pressure on the budget and are often treated as charged expenditure from the federal consolidated fund, which parliament is informed about but does not vote on. In practice, once the money has been spent, parliament cannot reject it.

The documents show that in the current fiscal year, a Rs. 4 billion supplementary grant was released as cash compensation to residents of Chauntra village for land acquired for Defence Complex Islamabad. Another Rs. 34 billion went to defence-related needs, including helicopter spare parts, fencing along the Pakistan-Iran border, internal security duties, special north and south security divisions and development of naval bases.

In the power sector, the supplementary allocation for 2025-26 includes Rs. 105.5 billion for equity injection into distribution companies and Rs. 6.5 billion for development requirements.

In education, the bulk of the Rs. 57 billion supplementary grant — around Rs. 54 billion — was allocated to Daanish Education Trust, bailout packages for Quaid-i-Azam University and Cadet College Hassan Abdal, and the Pakistan Education Endowment Fund.

The documents also show that Rs. 127.4 billion was utilised for the Prime Minister’s Austerity Fund during 2025-26. In addition, about Rs. 11 billion in supplementary grants was provided to PTV against tariff adjustment and net metering, while Rs. 2.8 billion was allocated for an English news channel.

A further Rs. 800 million was approved for the Pakistan Virtual Assets Authority, while Rs. 2 billion was set aside for the Pakistan Digital Authority and Assan Khidmat Centre.

Other notable allocations include Rs. 15 billion for maintenance of law and order, Rs. 4.7 billion for a support package for missing persons, Rs. 30 billion for procurement of vaccines and related material on behalf of provincial governments, and Rs. 1.4 billion for the Frontier Corps for security of the Reko Diq project in Balochistan.

The government also approved Rs. 22 billion for the Prime Minister’s Ramazan package and Rs. 7 billion for MNAs’ development schemes in the four provinces and Islamabad.