The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) on Wednesday unveiled its five-pillar Emergency Reforms Program under which the prime minister would have to live in a minister’s enclave to help the economic mangers cut the back-breaking current expenditure of the resource-constrained federal government.
Focusing on energy, expenditure, tax, institutions and education and health, the PTI’s apparently ambitious but well-thought-out reforms agenda would start from the party’s own leadership in terms of implementation.
“The prime minister would live in a minister’s enclave or house,” Jhangir Khan Tarin, PTI’s central leader, told reporters while unveiling his party’s “Economic Vision” along with party fellow Asad Umer.
Tarin said the special thing about the “technically sound document” was that it was owned by the entire political hierarchy of the PTI. “This carries backing of the entire PTI hierarchy”.
He said unlike the PPP and PML-N, whose leadership always devised policies during initial couple of years of their election, the PTI formulated its economic roadmap in advance.
Asad Umer, PTI’s central vice president, said his party had designed a broad framework to deal with the structural problems of the country’s troubled economy.
A handout distributed to media carried the party’s economic policy that is aimed at ridding Pakistan of the vicious cycle of low growth, high inflation and rising poverty.
“This program aims at deep institutional reform and takes on the powerful entrenched vested interests head on to break the status quo,” the policy says.
Under the energy reforms, the party after coming to power would focus on reducing the cost of producing electricity from indigenous resources.
This will resolve the circular debt and make Pakistan an energy secure state. The details have already been announced in the energy plan announced earlier
“We would focus on the schemes and projects that can make the power generation system efficient,” Umer said, claiming that his side had evaluated each and every machine to calculate the expected results in terms of capacity and production.
Under the expenditure reform, the party would shutdown the Prime Minister, Chief Minister and Governor houses. It would cut budget for the Presidency by 50 percent. Reduce the number of ministries, not ministers, to 17 from the current 37.
“Change always begins from the top. Until they change their own lifestyle, the leaders cannot implement morals in the country,” Umer said.
It will abolish handing out free and subsidized plots. The party will ask all state departments, including the military, to reduce spending and release funds for the welfare of the citizens.
Asked how would the PTI accomplish the daunting task of convincing the Pakistan Army to reduce expenditure, Tarin said: “We would first implement the reforms on ourselves (politicians) and then sit with the army to demand the same in broader national interest.”
Under the tax reforms, the party plans to tax all incomes regardless of source and create a just and equitable tax system. A minimum asset tax adjustable against income already paid will be imposed.
“Soft amnesty schemes” will be ended. The provincial governments will have to take responsibility of collecting the property and agriculture tax from large landholders. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will be revamped to become an autonomous institution that is insulated from political pressures.
“Reforms will increase tax revenue to 15 percent of GDP in 2018 from 9.9 percent in 2012,” it said.
On the institutional front, the PTI will carry out deep reforms that could make state institutions empowered accountable and transparent. The party will devolve power from the central and provincial capitals and empower local communities at the grassroots level.
“Over centralization of power in the hands of center, provincial capitals or a few families stands to be a big barrier in Pakistan,” Umer said, adding that “de-centralization of power should be on the village level”.
He said politicization of civil services had weakened the state to the extent that a police officer today could not keep traffic in order.
Accountability institutions, like NAB, would be outside the purview of the government to enable across-the-board accountability with no political interference. A special Task Force would be formed to recover the looted national wealth stashed outside the country. All recovered assets of corruption would be used for educating the country’s youth, he said.
Reforms in the education and health sectors will bring one modern education system for all Pakistanis.
“No country of the world spends such a meager amount on education and health like Pakistan,” Umer lamented.
The PTI, he said, would enhance education spending five folds to Rs 2.195 trillion by 2018 to achieve 80percent enrollment and empower communities to manage schools.
“Similarly, we will introduce a free health care system for the poor,” the policy said adding that “spending on health will increase five folds to Rs 1.142 trillion by 2018”.
Umer said the PTI economic policy envisaged an indigenous investment and trade driven growth strategy for sustaining a welfare state. “The PTI targets to ramp up investment spending to 21.4% of GDP by 2018 after collapsing to 12.4% under the present regime” he said.
Tarin added that the PTI would soon be making public its policies related to trade and industry, health and education and other areas pertaining to good governance.