An under-developed state is in a fixation with the international donor. Pakistan’s desire to bring the IMF on board and make it realise that there won’t be any pilferage and wastage in developmental projects is a challenge in itself. The parleys underway to brief and debrief the Fund are tricky, to say the least. Reports say a 60-point action plan, spanning two years, has already been mutually endorsed by the IMF and Pakistan, and is awaiting a nod from the federal cabinet. While the impact and consequences of the agreed programme will spill over into the next political dispensation, this is where an assured mechanism is needed to keep it on track and also to see to it that political stability returns in due course of time.
Pakistan has a serious problem of a pestering discord between the bureaucracy and the elected civil strata, and this is where consistency and transparency is lost. Owing to arm-twisting and meddling, public sector developmental programmes either remain in limbo, or are winded up before completion. This is where the national exchequer goes down the drain. Thus, public investment policy, approval and implementation framework should be strictly monitored, and all ill-conceived or politically influenced projects with no or little benefit at grassroots levels must be scrapped. The Fund’s eagerness to see one-window operations come into play and to separate tax policy from FBR functions is a case in point. It is good to learn that the newly-formed Special Investment Facilitation Council has made great strides in it to make it viable and productive.
The review talks with the IMF for the $3 billion special package form the crux behind the reforms strategy. The axe has already fallen as the government decided to slash the PSDP by a quarter to Rs600 billion. But what goes missing is that non-developmental budgets in the form of perks and privileges are untouched. The civil, judicial and military bureaucracy, serving and retired, eats up a sizable chunk, and this is where revulsion is bred with the masses. Will someone cut this too?
Published in The Express Tribune, November 10th, 2023.
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