ISLAMABAD- Confronting one after another difficulty in formulation of the budget 2008-09, the Finance Ministry is in an all-time fix having the national kitty run out of funds to release money against allocations of current expenditures up to June 30. According to well-placed sources, the officials concerned have already informed the competent authority that the available funds with Ministry for periodical releases were hardly sufficient upto May 25, something speaks a volume of the financial conditions of the national exchequer that has failed to fund the last year allocations for upto June 30, 2008. The immediate way out with the government, the sources said, was to approach the central bank for borrowing. The State Bank of Pakistan, already in process of tightening the monetary policy to contain skyrocketing inflation, would hardly be in a position to welcome the request of the Finance Ministry, the sources said. The Finance Ministry officials, the sources added, were finding it hard to justify the eleventh hour bank borrowing and that too for the current expenditures of the outgoing financial year, clearly over and above the previously set targets. Second option with the Finance Ministry, the sources underlined, in this regard was the 'get high cost commercial loans'. The borrowing from the private sector in the event of recently increased interest rates by the central bank would further load the cost of debt financing already increasing the fiscal deficit. According to the sources, excessive supplementary grants by both the former and the current governments, overrun on account of the discretionary funds, and the impact of price hike coupled with the rupee devaluation have caused the shortage of funds with the Finance Ministry. Therefore, the sources added, the high-ups considering the current situation as serious have advised the government not to allow any of the supplementary grants in future. Secondly, the Ministry has also proposed that the approval of the supplementary grants sought for the outgoing year should also be done after a tight scrutiny. The sources reluctantly informed TheNation that most of the supplementary grants during the outgoing year were coming from the apex institutions namely the Presidency, the Prime Minister Secretariat, and the Judiciary. In the judiciary, they added, the need for counterpart funds to the Access to Justice Programme with increased currency exchange rates have necessitated supplementary grants for sizeable funds.