Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Information and Broadcasting Barrister Danyal Chaudhry urged the government to place children at the centre of fiscal planning ahead of the FY2026-27 federal budget, noting that children comprise more than 40 percent of the population while public resources for them remain limited. He said targeted child investments are essential to turn allocations into measurable improvements for Pakistan’s youngest citizens.

The appeal came during a pre-budget roundtable convened by UNICEF in partnership with the SDGs Secretariat and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, which brought together parliamentarians and policy experts to examine budget patterns and provincial examples of social sector spending.

Reviewing FY2025-26 trends, speakers highlighted a 20.7 percent rise in social protection driven largely by the Benazir Income Support Programme, only marginal growth in education allocations and a sharp fall in health funding from PKR 52.13 billion to PKR 31.97 billion. Experts warned that primary and preventive healthcare receives barely 10 percent of the resources devoted to tertiary care, a shortfall that directly affects maternal and child health outcomes.

Barrister Danyal underscored broader fiscal gaps, noting Pakistan spends about 0.9 percent of GDP on health compared with the WHO-recommended 5 percent, while education funding remains below half of UNESCO’s 4–6 percent benchmark. These constraints are visible in outcomes where 77 percent of ten-year-olds face learning poverty and roughly one in three children under five is stunted.

Participants discussed immediate steps to reprioritise within existing allocations, strengthen absorptive capacity so unspent development funds are utilised, and explore innovative financing mechanisms to expand child-focused programmes. Barrister Danyal called on Parliament to play an active role in shaping and scrutinising child investments and said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will ensure transparent communication of budget deliberations to improve public understanding and accountability.