President Asif Ali Zardari has promulgated the Federal Ministers and Ministers of State (Salaries, Allowances and Privileges) Amendment Ordinance, 2025, increasing the monthly salaries of federal and state ministers by up to 188%. After the salary hike for members of parliament earlier this year, the federal cabinet in March also approved a significant increase in the salaries and allowances of its members. In its meeting on March 21, the federal cabinet approved the summary of the increase in the salaries of federal ministers and ministers of state. An amendment to the Federal Ministers and Ministers of State (Allowances and Salaries) Act, 1975 was approved. After the approval of the bill, the salary of a federal minister, minister of state and adviser will be Rs519,000. Earlier, the salary of a federal minister was Rs200,000 and that of a minister of state was Rs180,000, according to The News. Under the ordinance, federal ministers and ministers of state will receive salaries equal to those of members of the National Assembly (MNA). As per the ordinance, the Federal Ministers and Ministers of State (Salaries, Allowances and Privileges) Act, 1975 has been amended. This ordinance will come into effect from January 1, 2025. In February, the lawmakers secured a massive 138% pay raise as the NA passed the Members of Parliament Salaries and Allowances (Amendment) Bill 2025 with a majority vote. The bill proposed raising parliamentarians’ salaries from Rs218,000 to Rs519,000, aligning them with federal secretaries’ pay. Ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker Romina Khurshid Alam tabled the bill, with neither opposition nor treasury lawmakers raising any objection to the whopping increase in their salaries. On January 26, the National Assembly’s Finance Committee gave the bill a go-ahead in a meeting chaired by the National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq. Sworn political rivals from all parliamentary parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), PML-N, and others, were on the same page regarding a massive increase in their salaries. It is pertinent to know that the Punjab Assembly, in December, had also unanimously approved a bill to significantly increase lawmakers’ salaries, raising them from Rs76,000 to Rs400,000. Apart from the tweaks to the parliamentarians’ remuneration, the assembly also hiked the provincial ministers’ salaries from Rs100,000 to Rs960,000. The speaker’s salary was increased from Rs125,000 to Rs950,000, whereas that of the deputy speaker was hiked to Rs800,000 from the previous Rs120,000. Furthermore, parliamentary secretaries are to be paid Rs451,000 as opposed to the previous amount of Rs83,000; adviser to the chief minister from Rs100,000 to Rs665,000; special assistant to the chief minister from Rs100,000 to Rs665,000.