While the country`s weakened trade unions have been demanding decent living wages, the next year`s budget, to quote a development economist, `is glaringly silent about minimum wages`.

When asked at a press conference why the government did not announce a minimum wage, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said the industry in particular and the private sector in general were not willing to pay even the previous minimum wage announced by the government.

If the authorities can seek punitive legislation for tax compliance, analysts at Dawn say they can also draft a similar bill for implementation of the minimum wages rather than ceding to `employers diktat`.

Acknowledging positive measures in the budget, Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, head of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, observes, `Although minimum wages are not fully enforced in the private sector, they set a baseline, and many national and international firms adhere to them. The current minimumwage, Rs37,000 per month, is almost equivalent to the World Bank`s poverty threshold of $4.20 per day for lower-middle-income countries like Pakistan. To ensure that individuals receiving the minimum wage do not fall below the poverty line, the government should increase it.

Furthermore, a National Assembly panel revealed that the salaried class would still pay around Rs535 billion in the next fiscal year due to a paltry relief of Rs56bn given in the next year`s budget.

Writing on the state of the economy, analyst Saqib Sherani observes, `With one in two Pakistanis now below the poverty line and nearly one in four unemployed, the state of Pakistan`s economy has never been as dismal and worrisome as over the past three years.

This is the human cost of the stabilisation the government and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] are celebrating and sadly, glossing over.

Speaking of the ordinary Pakistanis that have paid a very heavy price for the stabilisation the government is celebrating, Mr Sherani adds, `There is no place for their suffering in the official narrative.It may be pertinent to add here that it is only federal participatory democracy anchored on grassroots democracy that can give citizens a voice in the corridors of power. To quote a social scientist, it is active leaders and active masses that together can trigger social and economic development.

The consumers will bear the brunt of global price hikes, as the Secretary of Finance has told the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue that the government would pass on the impact of an increase in oil prices as a result of regional conflict to the general public.

And as pointed out by an analyst, `There is not a single reform measure in this budget.` To quote a Dawn editorial, `No strategic change of direction is indicated anywhere.` The cost of tax exemptions has surged to a record of Rs5.8 trillion in the current fiscal year a surge of nearly Rs2tr in the first year of the present government despite the withdrawal of many tax exemptions, according to The Economic Survey of Pakistan 2025. In dollar terms, says another analyst, the cost of tax loss was $21bn substantially higher than the $17bn Pakistan is required to repay this year against its maturing commercial and bilateral external debt owed to China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.

Under a strategic rightsizing initiative aimed at cutting redundant spending and laying the groundwork for long-term economic stability, Salman Ahmad, a member of the Economic Advisory Council, clarified that the government is not planning to shut down entire ministries.

He told Geo News that individual departments within those ministries may be closed, merged, downsized, or transferred, depending on their relevance and performance. In the outgoing fiscal year the finance minister said that government spending had gone up by `just 1.9pc`.

Likewise, the federal budget deficit (revenue shortfall to meet expenditures) is also Rs1.9tr lower than the fiscal deficit of the outgoing budget.

The economy is in a deep downturn given the collapse of the crop sector and the drastic decline in incomes in rural areas, where almost 60pc of the population lives and where extreme poverty is concentrated, says Rashid Ahmad, professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

Despite the significant contribution of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), accounting for nearly 80pc of employment in the non-agricultural sector and 40pc of the country`s GDP, SMEs currently receive only around 6pc of total bank credit. This highlights the disconnect between their economic importance and financial access.

Pakistan was bottom-ranked among 148 countries in the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2025 with a 56.7pc gender parity, the highest since 2006. Pakistan saw its overall parity score decline from last year`s edition, from 57pc to 56.7pc. The only area of improvement is educational attainment driven by a modest rise in female literacy.m