Published on, Aug. 22 -- August 22, 2025 9:14 AM

Pakistan's 18th Constitutional Amendment, passed in 2010, transformed the country's fiscal federalism by deleting most of the Concurrent List, devolving major spending functions to provinces, and recasting the federation-province power balance. Politically, it deepened provincial autonomy; economically, it hard-wired a new budget arithmetic that still shapes every federal budget, IMF review, and development plan today. The question is no longer whether devolution is good or bad-it is whether the current design delivers national solvency, growth, and coherence without starving the centre or letting provinces default on service delivery.

The core fiscal pivot sits in Article 160(3A), insert...