Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb will present the federal budget for the next fiscal year (FY26-27) in the National Assembly on Friday, an adviser to the minister has confirmed.

Adviser to the Finance Minister Khurram Schehzad shared the revised budget schedule in a post on X.

He added that the Pakistan Economic Survey for the outgoing FY25-26 will be launched after 2:20pm tomorrow (Thursday) by Aurangzeb.

Budget sessions of the National Assembly and Senate have already been summoned by President Asif Ali Zardari.

The National Economic Council (NEC), the highest economic decision-making forum of the federation, met earlier on Wednesday to finalise federal and provincial development plans ahead of the budget presentation.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who chaired the meeting, said the Centre held consultations with the provinces on all matters “with extreme seriousness, and we made decisions in the best interest of Pakistan”.

The NEC finally met after being delayed three times , as negotiations had continued over the freezing of provincial shares in the federal divisible pool under the National Finance Commission (NFC) award.

The federal government, its coalition partners and provincial governments had been struggling to reach a consensus over the Centre’s demand for more than Rs1 trillion for strategic needs.

However, the ruling PML-N and its major ally, the PPP, on Monday reached a consensus on the broad framework of the federal budget.

They reached a broad agreement on cutting development and other expenditures at all tiers of the federation to cover around Rs800 billion revenue shortfall this year and jointly create similar, but higher, fiscal space next year for additional “strategic needs”.

Under the agreement, provincial shares from the federal divisible pool would stay frozen at the current fiscal year’s position. Any increase in the targeted revenue next year on top of the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) collection in the current year would be retained by the Centre, informed sources said.

More to follow