Budget strategy

WHAT’S the budget if not ‘strategic’? A mere accounting exercise; an attempt at balancing income and expenditure of the government? Well, the fact is that most budgets in the past have been devoid of any strategic direction. Now, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has promised to introduce “bold measures” in the upcoming budget to steer the economy in a “strategic direction”. What he means by bold measures or strategic direction remains unclear. The only hint he has dropped so far about the “strategic direction” concerns plans to expand the restructured debt management office’s goal “beyond reducing interest payments, and instead create economic value” or ‘Alpha’, a term used in finance to describe an investment strategy’s ability to beat the market, to put the economy on a sustainable growth path.