Barrister Danyal Chaudhry has urged that child investments be placed at the centre of the federal budget as Pakistan prepares allocations for FY2026-27, noting that children make up more than 40 percent of the population while public spending on child-focused services remains low.
Speaking at a pre-budget roundtable convened by UNICEF with the SDGs Secretariat and SDPI, Barrister Danyal reviewed fiscal movements from FY2025-26 and flagged worrying trends. Social protection spending rose by 20.7 percent, largely driven by BISP, but education saw only marginal increases and health funding fell from PKR 52.13 billion to PKR 31.97 billion.
He warned that the balance of care is skewed toward tertiary services: primary and preventive healthcare receives barely one-tenth of what is spent on tertiary care, directly affecting maternal and child health outcomes. Pakistan currently spends around 0.9 percent of GDP on health, well below the WHO-recommended 5 percent, and education spending remains under half of UNESCO’s 4–6 percent benchmark.
These fiscal shortfalls are reflected in human development indicators: 77 percent of ten-year-olds face learning poverty and roughly one in three children under five is stunted. Barrister Danyal argued that targeted child investments are essential to reverse these trends and to ensure that budget choices translate into better learning and nutrition outcomes.
The roundtable titled “Child-Focused Social Sector Investments with Examples from Provinces – Challenges, Opportunities and Gaps” brought together parliamentarians and policy experts to discuss reprioritising within existing allocations, improving absorptive capacity to utilise unspent development funds, and exploring innovative financing mechanisms to expand child investments without widening fiscal deficits.
Emphasising Parliament’s role in budget scrutiny, Barrister Danyal said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will support transparent dissemination of budget deliberations to help the public follow decisions that affect children. He called on lawmakers and provincial leaders to prioritise primary health, early learning and social protection so that child investments yield measurable improvements for Pakistan’s youngest citizens.
