Government Spending on Official Affairs Rises 28% in First Quarter Despite AusterityPakistan

The government has set a spending target of Rs1,071 billion for this category during the current fiscal year, the figures show, indicating that expenditure is expected to rise further over the remaining months of the year.

The figures also show a steady increase in government spending on official affairs over the past few years. The government spent Rs1,033.51 billion in FY2025-26, compared with Rs892 billion in FY2024-25, Rs784 billion in FY2023-24, Rs634 billion in FY2022-23 and Rs547 billion in FY2021-22, according to the Ministry of Finance figures reported by 24News.

The wider first-quarter picture reported from the same Finance Ministry data points in the same direction. Overall government spending in July to September 2026 rose by 16 per cent, according to the Finance Ministry data reported by Dawn, placing the rise in spending on running official affairs within a broader increase in total expenditure during the quarter.

The latest figures show that spending on official affairs has continued to increase despite repeated efforts to control expenses, according to the report. The rise in the first quarter came even though austerity measures were in place, and the increase of more than 28 per cent was measured against the same three months of the previous year.

The comparison with last year underlines the scale of the change. In July to September 2025, the federal government spent Rs161.18 billion on running its affairs, while the figure for the same period this year reached Rs206.64 billion, an increase of more than Rs45 billion in three months, according to the figures reported by 24News.

The report did not give a detailed breakdown of the spending, and it did not set out which departments or items accounted for the increase. The figures published by the Ministry of Finance cover the cost of running official affairs as a category, and the full-year target of Rs1,071 billion shows the level of spending the government expects for the year as a whole.