The gap between what the government spends and what it collects in revenue, for the full fiscal year.
Source: SBP EasyData, annual fiscal year, consolidated federal and provincial government balance. This series updates only once a year, so the latest observation is normally many months old. PEIC has no verified SBP publication date for it, so freshness is judged against a generous annual tolerance — a “Stale” label means that window has passed, not that the data is wrong or that the provider has failed.
The fiscal balance is the difference between total government revenue (taxes, non-tax receipts) and total government spending (current expenditure, development spending, debt servicing) over a fiscal year (July to June in Pakistan).
A negative number is a fiscal deficit — the government spent more than it collected, and the gap must be financed through domestic or external borrowing.
Pakistan has run a fiscal deficit in nearly every year for decades, driven mainly by a narrow tax base, high debt-servicing costs, and large recurring current expenditure relative to revenue collection.
Persistent fiscal deficits force the government to borrow continuously, growing public debt and the interest burden — debt servicing is now one of the largest single items in Pakistan's federal budget.
The fiscal deficit is one of the core conditions IMF programs target directly, since unsustainable deficits financed by central bank money creation or excessive borrowing feed into inflation and currency pressure.