Karachi: Research by a non-profit has revealed the biggest portion of Pakistan’s public money is being spent on the education sector, which is greater than the national defence budget. However, the number of out-of-school children in the country is still 22 million.
The non-profit Green Crescent Trust (GCT), which has been operating charitable schools for the past 28 years, hired interns to conduct research to find out Pakistan’s total spending on the public education sector.
“The data compiled by our interns is completely verifiable and collected from the most authentic sources,” said the GCT, CEO, Zahid Saeed, who presented the findings of the research at the annual fundraiser of his non-profit.
He said the research conducted by the GCT compiled data on the budgetary spending on the education sector by the federal, provincial, and regional governments in Pakistan.
Saeed said the research revealed the total spending of Pakistan to run its 300,000 government educational institutions was Rs1,300 billion (Dh26 billion) in a year.
“This is contrary to the general perception prevailing in the country that Pakistan’s highest budgetary expenditure is on defence sector, which is around Rs1,250 billion annually,” he said.
He said that total budgetary expenditure on human development in Pakistan came to around Rs2,200 billion in a year.
Giving the example of Sindh province, the GCT CEO said the provincial government alone spent Rs270 billion in a year out of its total annual budget of Rs1,100 billion to run 45,000 government schools.
