Eleven percent growth is doing a lot of work in this budget
Three revenue lines carry the plan. Two of them depend on imports that fell last quarter, and the third is a fee the ministry has not yet published.
By Pratik Adhikari · Economics desk
The budget's arithmetic stands on one percentage. Revenue growth of eleven percent appears twice in the plan — in the revenue line and, multiplied through, in the spending the line is meant to fund. Remove it and the primaries stop balancing, which is why it is worth asking where the eleven came from.
The ministry's supporting note is four pages. Three of them carry last year's text with the columns renamed; the fourth lists the sources without the values. We rebuilt the number from the published tables instead: customs duty, VAT and the new infrastructure fee.
Two of the three lines assume a trade volume that fell last quarter — the customs base is imports, and imports are down in the same months the plan projects them up. The third, the infrastructure fee, is a rate without a published schedule, which makes it the hardest line to check and the easiest to miss.
This is an argument, not a verdict: show us the mineral rightsholders' payment schedule and the number may close. Until the schedule is published, the growth rate is doing the work of an assumption nobody signed.
Revenue growth assumed
11.0%
Ten-year average actual growth: 5.4%. Sources: annual ministry notes, customs tables we rebuilt by line.
“A revenue target is not a forecast. It is a promise with a deadline attached.”
Corrections run in place, with the figure re-checked
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