Karachi left without new mega projects in Sindh’s 2026 budget

Karachi remains Pakistan’s economic backbone, generating the bulk of the country’s tax revenues, yet year after year the city continues to grapple with crumbling infrastructure, water shortages, failing public transport and long-stalled development projects - a stark contrast that has once again come into focus with Sindh’s latest budget.

A closer look at Sindh’s new budget - the 18th presented by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government - suggests that solving Karachi’s chronic problems remains far from a priority. Despite a provincial development program worth PKR 720 billion, the city has been left without a single new mega project for the third consecutive year, while dozens of older schemes remain incomplete and underfunded.

Speaking in the latest episode of On My Radar, Kamran Khan said the budget reflects a troubling pattern: while the size of Sindh’s finances has grown dramatically over the years, the condition of its people and infrastructure has seen little meaningful improvement.

Budget figures show that Sindh’s provincial budget has expanded more than thirteenfold in the past 18 years — from PKR 267 billion in 2008–09 to PKR 3.56 trillion today. During the same period, provincial revenue rose from PKR 207 billion to PKR 3.52 trillion, while annual development spending jumped from PKR 89 billion to PKR 720 billion.

Yet despite this sharp rise in resources, much of Sindh’s population continues to live without basic necessities. Around 80% of residents still lack access to clean drinking water, while nearly 44% of children remain out of school.

Successive budgets have repeatedly promised development and progress, but many projects either never materialized or were left unfinished. Even several flagship initiatives have become symbols of waste and neglect.

One of the clearest examples is the Sindh government’s clean drinking water program, under which 2,300 reverse osmosis (RO) plants were installed in remote areas at a cost of PKR 13 billion. The project was long promoted as a flagship initiative, but today nearly 90% of those plants are reportedly non-functional, effectively turning Sindh into what critics call a graveyard of RO plants.

Karachi, despite contributing nearly 60% of Pakistan’s total tax revenues and 95% of Sindh’s provincial tax income, has fared no differently. The city has become home to numerous delayed and abandoned mega projects, with only a handful of smaller schemes completed over the past 18 years.

The provincial government has announced plans to spend PKR 100 billion on Karachi in the upcoming fiscal year. However, within the broader PKR 720 billion development budget, no new large-scale project has been earmarked for the city.

Instead, only PKR 6.94 billion have been allocated for 17 ongoing mega projects, even though an additional PKR 35 billion is still needed to complete them. At the current pace of funding, those projects could take another five years to finish.

For many critics, these projects now stand as lasting reminders of broken promises - kept alive on paper through token annual allocations, but far from becoming the transformative developments they were once promised to be.