Lucky and unlucky factors
Perhaps Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir was just unlucky that the World Bank played down his rosy picture of the economy within a day. But then the N-league, especially its economic team, should be the last people in the country to complain about luck. Where would growth have settled, for example, if Brent had not collapsed and the deficit spared further bloating? It’s not as if tax- or export-earnings have multiplied – as promised on the campaign trail. And they felt the pinch, although briefly, when remittances suffered because of the Gulf discontent after the Yemen disappointment, etc.
Interestingly, the Bank also poured cold water on the official excuse for the troubling decline in exports. The low interest rate and cheap(er) energy didn’t work because of the economy’s lingering structural deficiencies, we’ve finally been told, not because the Chinese slowdown weakened commodity prices, as the commerce ministry says. And unless we begin the painful process of adding value to the export basket, things will not change even after the Chinese economy rebounds. Unfortunately, though, the expected 14 percent year-on-year decline in exports is not prompting the right kind of soul searching in the ruling party.
From the looks of things, the government will sell 4.5 GDP growth as something of an achievement, just because the Fund recently revised the figure further down to 4.2. And then it will be back to the usual way of running the economy till the next budget, at least. This explains, to an extent, why the government has little to say about economic achievements except outside initiatives like CPEC or exogenous factors like low oil. It’s important to realise, though, that the good luck might not hold at the election if taxes and exports are not sorted out even if the outside windfall continues.
Pointing out flaws does not make sense since this is done routinely and has little or no affect. Our exports are even less than Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The only very stong exports from Pakistan is 'money' – illegally. Why, otherwise scandles like Panama Papers ? Irony of this poor nation.
Selfishness in a word is the main cause of this sorry state of affairs. Excuses are galore in a society that has lost interest in standing before the mirror and accept it’s errors. Religion, politics, economics, even sports and education are only to gain something. Country is losing influence at every forum but talks is becoming our speciality as that alone is enough. Yes that’s enough but only to fill space. What a sad story of a country which was built on so much promise and past.
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