Pakistan’s development challenge is not a shortage of plans but a persistent gap between planning and completion. Large project portfolios, limited fiscal space, weak implementation and shifting priorities often delay the conversion of public spending into productive assets.
Development policy needs greater continuity, with viable projects protected across political and administrative transitions. Every year, federal and provincial budgets set new priorities for roads, water, energy, education, health and other public investments. The deeper challenge is turning those allocations into completed assets. When projects are added faster than they can be financed or when they lose momentum as institutional priorities change, development spending becomes spread across an expanding portfolio of unfinished commitments.
The country needs to move from a culture of project announcement towards a culture of project completion, where viable public investments belong to the state and continue beyond changes in government and administrative leadership.
The scale of the problem is visible in Pakistan’s annual development planning. For FY2026-27, the Annual Plan Coordination Committee recommended a national development outlay of Rs4.715 trillion, including a federal Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) of Rs1.126 trillion and provincial Annual Development Programs of Rs3.138 trillion. Yet federal ministries and divisions sought around Rs4.1 trillion for PSDP projects, including Rs3.3 trillion for ongoing schemes. The Planning Commission warned that, at the available funding level, the existing federal portfolio could require around ten years to complete. Consequently, more than 98 per cent of available federal development resources went to ongoing projects, particularly high-impact and near-completion schemes. These figures expose a structural mismatch between what Pakistan plans to build and what it can realistically finance. The federal PSDP for 2024-25 began with throw-forward liabilities of Rs10.216 trillion, while the Planning Commission reported more than Rs1.1 trillion in cost escalation associated with project revisions. Delays therefore do more than postpone development. They can significantly increase the eventual cost of producing the same infrastructure or service.
This raises a broader policy question: How can annual development planning produce lasting results when the implementation life of major projects frequently extends beyond the political, budgetary and administrative cycles surrounding them?
The concern is not new. A study published in The Pakistan Development Review in 1992 examined Pakistan’s project cycle from identification and preparation through approval, implementation and evaluation. It highlighted weak links between sector planning and project selection, inadequate feasibility preparation, lengthy approval processes, gaps between planned expenditure and actual releases, weak implementation monitoring and limited post-completion evaluation. Many of these weaknesses persist in development management. More recent research points in the same direction. A systematic review of 32 studies on Pakistan’s infrastructure projects identified administrative weaknesses, improper financial planning, governance problems, technical issues, legal constraints, market risks and weak cost estimation as factors contributing to delays and cost overruns. This suggests that the problem cannot be reduced to one government, one department or one political period. It is rooted more deeply in how projects are selected, financed, implemented and carried forward.
Continuity matters because major public investments are inherently multiyear. A dam, railway line, university, hospital, irrigation system or transport project cannot realistically be designed around a single annual budget. Priorities may change when governments change, but similar disruption can also occur at lower levels when ministers, secretaries, departmental heads or project directors change.
Administrative review is sometimes necessary, but a technically sound and economically viable project should not lose momentum simply because leadership has changed. When the system rewards initiating something new more than completing what is already underway, it can unintentionally reward beginnings rather than results.
This does not mean that every existing project should continue indefinitely. Governments must be able to reconsider investments that become financially unsustainable, technically defective, duplicative, unlawful or inconsistent with changing public needs. However, political or administrative transition should not, by itself, be sufficient reason to stop a viable project after substantial public resources have already been committed. Development should be regarded as a responsibility of the state rather than the ownership of the administration or individual under whom a project began.
India provides a useful institutional lesson. No blanket Indian law requires every public project to continue regardless of circumstances. However, the Supreme Court of India has emphasised continuity of the state. Indian jurisprudence holds that where an earlier governmental decision does not depend on a particular political philosophy, a succeeding government should generally carry forward unfinished public work rather than stop it solely because the government has changed.
Pakistan could incorporate a comparable principle into its development-management framework. Once a project has passed proper feasibility and economic appraisal, received competent approval, obtained a credible financing plan and entered implementation, there should be a presumption in favour of completion. Suspension, redesign or cancellation should require clearly recorded technical, fiscal, legal or public-interest justification. Annual development planning should consequently apply a completion test before a new-project test. Near-completion and high-return ongoing projects should receive adequate resources before adding large numbers of additional schemes to an already constrained portfolio. Each major project should have a credible multiyear financing and implementation plan, not merely an annual allocation. The Planning Commission is already emphasising near-completion projects and multiyear financing for critical schemes, recognising that delays postpone economic benefits and increase costs.
Accountability should reinforce this approach. Pakistan needs a public digital register showing each major project’s approved and revised cost, annual allocation, releases, physical progress, expected completion date and reasons for delay. Departments should be assessed not merely by how many initiatives they introduce, but by how effectively they convert existing public commitments into completed assets.
Pakistan’s development challenge is ultimately about restoring continuity between planning, budgeting and delivery. Governments will change, officials will transfer and development priorities will evolve. The state, however, must retain responsibility for viable investments already undertaken in the public interest. When completing a project carries as much institutional value as announcing one, Pakistan’s annual development plans can become instruments of sustained economic progress rather than recurring portfolios of unfinished commitments.
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