A plain-English breakdown of where every Rupee of Pakistan's federal budget goes — debt servicing, defence, development, and provincial transfers — sourced from the official Budget in Brief.
Source: Budget in Brief, FY2026-27 Budget Estimate.
FY2026-27 — For every Rs100 the federal government spends.
Source: Budget in Brief — Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan.
Every time you pay sales tax on a purchase, or income tax on a salary, that money joins a much bigger pool that the federal government then divides up. This page shows you exactly how that pool is split, in the simplest way possible: for every Rs100 the government spends, how many rupees go where.
In recent years, the single biggest slice has usually gone to debt servicing — interest payments on past borrowing — followed by provincial transfers, defence, and development spending through the PSDP. Subsidies and pensions take smaller slices.
Seeing the numbers this way often surprises people, because debt servicing rarely gets the same public attention as defence or development spending, even though it now costs more. Understanding this breakdown is one of the simplest ways to understand the real pressures on Pakistan's fiscal deficit and why the government keeps having to borrow more each year.
What's the single biggest use of Pakistan's tax money?
In most recent years, debt servicing (interest payments on public debt) is the largest single allocation — larger than defence, PSDP, or subsidies.
Does this include provincial government spending?
No — this is the federal budget only. Each province (Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan) has its own separate budget, not included here.
Where does the "Other" category come from?
"Other" is the residual after subtracting Debt Servicing, Defence, PSDP, Subsidies, Provincial Transfers, and Pension from Total Outlay — it includes Grants & Transfers to Provinces and Others, Running of Civil Government, Net Lending, and contingency provisions.
Does this change much from year to year?
The ranking of the top 2-3 categories has stayed fairly stable in recent years, but the exact Rupee amounts and percentages shift annually — use the fiscal year selector on the Budget Workshop's main page to compare different years directly.
Why isn't education or health shown in this breakdown?
Education and health spending come from a different part of the budget (functional classification) than the categories shown here (economic classification), so they can't be subtracted from this same total without double-counting. See the dedicated Federal Education and Federal Health pages instead.
Is this the same as 'where my income tax goes'?
Conceptually yes, though in practice all tax revenue — income tax, sales tax, customs duty, and more — is pooled together before being spent, so no single tax can be traced to a single spending category.
Why does Provincial Transfers count as 'spending' here if it's revenue-sharing?
Technically, provincial transfers are deducted on the revenue side, not booked as federal expenditure — but since this page asks where the government's overall resource pool ends up, provincial transfers are included as one of its real destinations, clearly labelled as such.
How is this different from the donut chart on the main Budget Workshop page?
It's the same underlying data and the same seven categories — this page presents it specifically as a per-Rs100 breakdown for an easier, more intuitive read, rather than as percentages on a chart.
Related Budget Categories
Related Provincial Pages